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�ON
EINSTEIN
t isn't always easy to get alumni out for a chapter event in the dead of
winter, particularly right after the holidays. So imagine tutor Sam Kuder's
delight when the Annapolis chapter drew about 25 participants to a
Saturday morning seminar he was leading on Einstein a week after
New Year's. Annapolis Johnnies aren't the only ones eager to talk about
Einstein and his special theory of relativity during the centennial of
Einstein's anna mirabilis. Several chapters have seminars planned.
In this issue of The College, tutors and alumni describe working through the
paper as one of the most remarkable experiences they've had at the college-one
that stays with them long after they've moved on to other pursuits.
Who isn't familiar with Einstein's struggles in his early education? Born in 1879
to middle-class German parents Hermann and Pauline Einstein, young Albert
frustrated his parents and teachers. His penchant for daydreaming and dislike of
rote memorization are well known, but popular lore mistakenly brands him as a
poor student. At the Institute ofTechnologyin Zurich, he preferred independent
research to the lecture hall.
When he couldn't find an academic job after graduation, he landed at the Swiss
Patent Office in Bern. His undemanding day job gave him the freedom to think. And
his 1905 paper gave him instant fame-something Einstein accepted graciously, but
would gladly have done without. He was more fond of his violin, his sailboat, and his
work.
His unhappy first marriage to fellow physics student Mil eva Marie ended in
divorce. Einstein later married his cousin Elsa, who proved the cheerful hostess and
efficient helpmate Einstein failed to find in his first marriage. He had two sons by
Marie and a daughter born before their marriage who may have been given up for
adoption. He was fond of Elsa's two daughters, who provided great companionship
in his later years.
A life long pacifist, Einstein nevertheless decried the Nazis' rise to power and the
world's failure to stop Hitler earlier. His famous letter to Roosevelt warning that
Germany was likely building a bomb urged that the U.S. move quickly to develop
atomic weapons. He later regretted this and became a proponent of nuclear
disarmament. He died in Princeton, N.J., in 1955, after insisting that his office
at the Institute for Advanced Studies not be preserved, but made available for
someone else.
In his essay "The World as I See It," published in 1931, Einstein described himself
as a "lone traveler." "The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have
given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and
Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation
with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific
endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me," he wrote.
- Rll
' WINTER
THE
e
0
S!JOHN'S
College
2005
VoLUME 3I, IssuE I
THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS
• SANTA FE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA P'B
(usPs oi8-75o)
is published quarterly by
St. John's College, Annapolis, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
THE CoLLEGE
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John's College
Box28oo
Annapolis, MD 2I404-28oo
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
POSTMASTER: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John's College,
Box 28oo, Annapolis, MD
2I404-28oo.
Rosemary Harty, editor
John Hartnett (SF8g),
Santa Fe editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Sus san Borden (A87)
August Deimel (SFo4)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Erin Hughey-Comers (Aos)
Carolyn Knapp (SFOI)
Andra Maguran
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Natalie Rinn (Aos)
Roxanna Seagraves (SF83)
Christopher Utter (Ao6)
Robin Weiss (SFGI82)
Roseanna White (Ao4)
··· ·· ·· ············· ·· ···· ·· ·· ······ ····
{CONTENTS}
PAGE
12
D E P A R T M E N T S
2
THE CHAIR
A visit to the Clore factory reveals just
what goes into the famous St. John's
chair.
PAGE
14
EINSTEIN AND THE
PROGRAM
8
PAGE
I2
Alumni and tutors say that studying the
I go 5 paper is an exceptional experience
at St. John's.
PAGE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
A New President in Santa Fe
The Magnificent Seven
MacGyver Meets the Johnnies
Mellon Grant Supports Tutors
Ringing a Bell for the Annual Fund
Reunion Class Leaders
LETTERS
28 THE FACULTY
29 BIBLIOFILE
A co-editor of a new commentary on
Milton, William Moeck (A8o) once
thought Paradise Lost would be too
boring.
20
ATOMIC JoHNNIES
3I ALUMNI NOTES
Los Alamos National Laboratory has
provided some interesting professional
and educational opportunities for these
Johnnies.
PROFILES
30 Linnea Back Klee (A67) works for quality
child care in San Francisco.
33 Documentary filmmaker Alex Shear
HoMECOMING
(SFoo) encounters baseball fever in
Japan.
36 Ross Mackenzie (AGio3) demystifies the
. Naval Academy.
It was all for Homer in Annapolis.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
PAGE
26
PAGE
I4
48 ST. JOHN ' S FOREVER
PAGE
26
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
ON THE COVER
Albert Einstein
Illustration by David]olznson
�{F
R 0 M
THE
BE L ,L
T
0 wE R
s}
A NEW PRESIDENT IN SANTA FE
St. fohns Finds a Leader at the Council on Foreign Relations
BY JOHN HARTNETT
At first glance, it wouldn't
Along with experience in
appear that St. John's College
administration and international
(goo students on two campuses)
affairs, Peters brings to his new
and the United States Military
position a deep appreciation for
Academy (4 ,000 cadets) have a
the ancient world, rooted in his
great deal in common. But
early life as the son of a military
Michael Peters, a West Point
officeT. His father was stationed
graduate and the new president
in Ankara, Turkey, giving the
of the Santa Fe campus, sees
cmious teen the perfect home
striking similarities ben-vccn
base to explore the great sites
the two institutions.
of the ancient world.
Both colleges are founded on
"My first two years in high
principles and missions, and both
school, I traveled all over
have a clear sense of their own
Turkey,Cyprus,andthe
unique identities. Most imporMediterranean," he says. "It
tant, says Peters, St. John's and
really solidified my interest in
West Point are among the few
history. So many of the classics
colleges still concerned with
we read at St. John's are set in
developing the moral character
places vivid in my memories.
of their students.
I've been to Ephesues, Izmir,
"St. John's and West Point
Iskenderun, Athens, and
both believe you can define what
Cyprus. I remember walking
a virtuous life is and what a
through the Cilician Gate where
person of honor is. Both colleges
Alexander marched his army to
believe that through exploration
meet the Persians. As a teen, it
and thought and interchange a
was an incredible experience."
student can come to understand
Retracing Alexander's route
what it means to be virtuous,
kindled a passion for history
honorable, and a person of
that led Peters to follow in his
integrity," he explains.
own father's footsteps. After
Both approach that goal the
high school, he entered the U.S.
same way: "The instructors at
Military Academy at West Point.
West Point give the cadets a
In 1968, he graduated and was
ALONG WITH MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE, MICHAEL PETERS BRINGS AN
model of what it means to be a
commissioned an officer in the
INTERNATIONAL VIEW TO ST. JoHN ' S COLLEGE.
good officer. Similarly, the
Army, taking command of a
tutors at St. John's give stutank platoon in Vietnam.
After his tour ended, Peters earned a master's in economics
dents a model for learning what it means to be a virtuous person
and a good citizen," Peters says.
from the University ofWashington, then returned to West Point
On November II, 2004, the college's Board ofVisitors and
to teach economics. "At that time every junior had to take the
Governors chose Peters to serve as the sixth president of the
economics course. I had IS instructors including the head of my
college's Santa Fe campus , bringing to a close a 16-month search
department working for me. I was a captain at the time and had a
to replace former president John Balkcom (SFGioo). Peters took
full colonel teaching for me," says Peters.
office January 17, just in time to preside over the January freshAfter teaching at \Vest Point, Peters studied Russian then
man convocation. Prior to joining the college, the retired Army
served as a Soviet military attache at the American embassy in
colonel had served as executive vice president of the Council on
Moscow. Living and working in that city at the height of the Cold
Foreign Relations in New York. A nonpartisan, foreign policyWar was "a true adventure in every sense oftheword," he
oriented membership organization, research center, and publishrecalls. Ronald Reagan had just begun his first term as president,
and U.S. -Soviet relations were rocky.
er, the Council provides programs (over 300 a year) and services
to ;},ooo members around the world and the general public.
It also publishes Foreign Affairs magazine and books on internacontinued on p. 3
tional affairs and foreign policy.
{ THE
CoL L EGE.
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
{FRoM THE BELL TowERS}
3
entailed managing the research arm of the
Council. His experience supervising
scholars and researchers at the council will
"You could never leave the apartment
make him feel "right at home with the
without coming back with a story," says
faculty and students of St. John's," he says.
Peters. "There was the time I coasted into
Peters had been aware of St. John's
the gas station running on fumes. Even
College for many years . After the executive
getting gas was always an adventure in
search firm contacted him to gauge his
Moscow. There were very few gas
interest in the position, he took a trip to
stations. The ones they did have were almost
Annapolis to visit classes. He was impressed
hidden-impossible to find. Once you found a
by what he saw and heard.
station, you couldn't pay cash-you had to buy
"I sat in on a seminar on Aristotle, then
coupons from the state, give yom coupons to
MICHAEL PE'I'ERS, SANTA FE PRESIDENT
Ptolemy in math tutorial, and a Greek class
the attendant, then wait for the person to set
translating the Meno. The experience really
the pump for the amount of gas you were
convinced me that St. John's was a place I
allowed to buy. In one instance I went to the
window, my car on empty, and one of the coupons I had was torn on would like to be part of. The interaction between students and
tutors, the commitment and enthusiasm of the students, and the
the corner. The woman refused to take it. I kept telling her how
respect that students have for one another, the tutors, and the
badly I needed the gas. I even had the torn corner and offeTed to
books were all incredibly powerful. It convinced me to look
tape it back on, but no matter how I pleaded, she still refused.
seriously at the college and to find a way I could be part of the
Finally I crossed my fingers and coasted off to another station
St. John's community," he says.
that did accept my coupon-even with the tear."
It didn't hurt that in all their travels, Peters and his wife,
PeteTs left Moscow for Berlin, wheTe he wmked as liaison
Eleanor, found Santa Fe and the Southwest to be among the most
officer to the Soviet Army in East Germany, to work as a
beautiful places they have visited. They are particularly keen to
conventional aTms negotiatm in Berlin. Later, during the
attend the acclaimed Santa Fe opera-one of their new homebuildup to the 1991 GulfWar, he led an elite Civil Mfairs
town's many cultural treasures-this summer. "Wherever Eleanor
Battalion in Saudi Arabia. He finished his militaTy career by
and I would go in the world, we tried to take advantage of the
returning to West Point- this time as an administrator.
local operas . In Moscow, for example, we quickly found out it
After retiring from the military with the rank of colonel,
was best to go only to Russian operas. Once you've seen Madame
Peters went to work for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Butteiflyin Russian, you'll never see h again," he says.~
During his nine years at the Council, Peters served as senior vice
pTesident, chief operating of:ficeT, and director of studies, which
(continued)
"The experience
really convinced me
that St. Johns was
a place I would lzke
to bepart if."
MICHAEL P. PETERS
At a Glance
Education: B.S., engineering, United States Military Academy
at West Point; M.A., economics, University ofWas~ington.
Recent Experience: As executive vice pTesident, Council on
Foreign Relations (2002-2004), seTved as the principal deputy
for the council's president in all areas of operations. Directed
the research arm of the council, supervising a staff of IOO,
including 70 research fellows. For seven years (1995-2002),
directed day-to-day operations of the council, including managing a budget of almost $30 million and a staff of over 200.
At West Point: As chief of staff from1992-1995, directed day-today operations of the academy and led a community of over
ro,ooo. Managed a $350 million operating budget. Directed a
strategic review of the academy defining the mission and
purpose of the institution for the 21st century.
{ THE
Co L LEGE .
Military Career: (Ig68-gs) Chief, Conventional Arms
Negotiations: Principal adviser to the Secretary of the
Army and the Chief of Staff, Army, on negotiation and
implementation of treaties to reduce conventional arms
in Europe.
Commander, g6th Civil Mfairs Battalion (Airborne): led
an elite, 200-person, special unit responsible fm working
with local officials and populace in support of U.S. military .
operations. Deployed to Saudi Arabia in the first month of
Operation Desert Shield; coordinated Saudi support for
the lo!-,ristical infrastructure required for the U.S. forces.
Coordinated the initial restoration of government services in
Panama following the removal of Manuel Noriega.
Executive assistant, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. Soviet Foreign Area Officer.
Assistant professor, United States Military Academy.
Platoon leader, executive officer and Armored Cavalry Troop
commander.
Recent reading: Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, a novel set in Turkey.
St. fohn's College . W in t er 20 0 5
}
�4
GILLIAM HALL
DEDICATION
{FRoM THE BELL TowERS}
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
G 1 l
The newest dormitory on the
Annapolis campus, Gilliam
Hall was formally dedicated in
a ceremony November rr.
Family members ofJames H.
Gilliam Jr., for whom the
building is named, and trustees
of The Hodson Trust, which
provided most of the funding
for the dormitory, attended the
ceremony and toured Gilliam
Hall afterward.
Gilliam was a trustee of
The Hodson Trust and vice
president ofthe Beneficial
Corporation in Wilmington,
Del., until his unexpected
death in the summer of 2003.
An Mrican-American lawyer
and business executive, he was also a respected civic leader and
philanthropist who believed in advancing opportunities for
others, particularly in higher education. To honor Gilliam's
memory, the first seven Mrican-American graduates of the
college attended the ceremony.
Long before he became a Hodson trustee, Gilliam came to
know St. John's through his service as a director of the Beneficial
Corporation. He was chairman of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute when the foundation gave St. John's its first grant, for
$r million. "He was proud that we received it, and it showed,"
said Christopher Nelson, president of the Annapolis campus .
The college is honored that the new dormitory will bear
Gilliam's name, he added. "I came to admire Jim as someone
who reflected the ideals of our community: he had a talent for
{FRoM THE BELL TowERs}
thinking through problems and LINDA GILLIAM (RIGHT) WITH
CHRISTOPHER NELSON, AND HER
presenting solutions. He was
DAUGHTERS ALEXIS AND LESLIE
humble and generous; he was
someone who had achieved
success in life and felt compelled to share his blessings
with others," Nelson said.
Finn M. W. Caspersen, chairman of The Hodson Trust,
described Gilliam as an individual with attributes that Johnnies
would particularly value. "He embodied good judgment. Even in
difficult situations, he always had the right answers."
Daniel Russell (Aos) had two reasons to thank the Hodson
Trust for its generous support of the college: He lives in Gilliam
Hall and has benefited from a Hodson-funded internship that
allowed him to experience life in a public defender's office last
summer. Russell praised the dorm's spacious common rooms,
the full-size kitchen, and the views of College Creek and the lower
playing field. But he also noted that the addition of the new
dormitory has enhanced the character of the campus.
"What used to be a dark and foreboding back campus has
now become a much more lively area," he said. "Gilliam Hall
has truly been a wonderful addition to the already wonderful
St. John's College."
Gilliam' s widow, Linda Gilliam, also thanked The Hodson
Trust and the St. John's College community for "this marvelous
tribute to Jim."
"With Gilliam Hall, his legacy lives on," she said.
Work is already well under way on the second dormitory, to be
built next to Gilliam Hall and available to students in January
2006. With eight dormitories, the college will be able to house
about 8o percent of its students on campus . ....
FINN CASPERSEN, CHAIRMAN OF
THE HoDsoN TRusT, PAID
Gathered together for the
happy occasion of dedicating
Gilliam Hall, the first seven
Mrican-American graduates
of St. John's College had a lot
of catching up to do. Many
are retired now; some complained of slovving down just a
little. Some are single, some
married with children and
grandchildren.
Perhaps, since they were
already vvilling to attend a college in a segregated city and
suffer the indignities associated
with such injustice, they were
remarkable people when they
arrived here. Whether the
college made a difference or
not, one thing is clear: they are
certainly remarkable people
now. All went on to earn
advanced degrees. In long and
productive careers, they
worked to improve the lives of
others through education,
advocacy, and education.
Groundbrcaker Martin Dyer
(class ohg52) capped a 30-year
career in public service with
another decade as a fairhousipg advocate. He's still
active as a consultant to the
Greater Baltimore Community
Housing Resource Board, and
serves on the college's Board of
Visitors and Governors.
Mtcr earning his master's in
clinical social work, Everett
Wilson (class ofrgs6) also went
into public service: 33 years
helping youth in the state of
Maryland's Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Administration. Now, he
counsels kids struggling with
Attention Deficit Disorder.
Leo L. Simms (class of
rgs6)has retired from the
business career he launched
after earning his MBA from
Boston College, but he
stays active in his church in
Chelmsford, Mass. Mter
graduation , he served in the
Air Force, studied to become a
Russian translator, and worked
for the National Security
Administration during the
height of the Cold War.
It's the retired life, too, for
Joan Cole (class ofr957), the
first African-American woman
community services and
mediation for many years;
she's currently a trainer for the
city's Children's Services
Administration and involved
in community service in
Queens, N.Y.
Jerry Hynson (class ofrgsg)
has more time for genealogy
and research now that he's
retired from a long career in
Baltimore schools, where he
THE PIONEERS : FROM LEFT TO RIGHT (BOTTOM): JOAN COLE, MARTIN
DYER, CAROLYN BAKER BRoWN. TOP: EvERETT WILsoN, LEo
L.
':After the
jirJt semeste~;
I knew this was
theplacefor me. "
}ERRY HYNSON (CLASS OF
I959)
to attend the college. She takes
the trips she has dreamed of
during a long and successful
career in the New York Public
Library system, where as a
regional manager, she supervised 20 branch libraries.
''I'm so glad I can read during
the daytime," she says.
Carolyn Baker Brown (class
ofrgs8) , another New Yorker,
earned her master's in social
work and has worked in
was a teacher, then assistant
principal. His published works
on Mrican-American history in
Maryland have covered topics
including runaway slaves
and freed African-Americans
before the Civil War. Charlotte
King (class ofrgsg) was
another graduate to spend
her life in public service as
a clinical therapist, social
worker, and social services
administrator.
It wasn't easy to be pioneers
in Annapolis before Brown V.
Board ofEducation made
segregated schools illegal.
Martin Dyer came to Annapolis
in rg48 and found the college
much more welcoming than
the greater Annapolis community. The Little Campus Inn on
Maryland Avenue may have
been an off-campus haven for a
TRIBUTE TO JAMES H. GILLIAM JR.
{ THE
CoLL E G F..
St. John 's College . W inter 2005
}
SIMMs,
CHARLOTTE KING, JERRY HYNSON.
{ TH E
CoLL E GE.
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
5
generations ofJohnnies, but
Dyer was never able to venture
inside. Wilson remembers he
couldn't try on a suit in a downtown clothing store. And King
was turned away from a church
in downtown Annapolis , told
that she would find a more
welcoming congregation in
another part of town.
"At St. John's, I was just
another student," Dyer says.
"Mter the first semester,"
says Hynson, "I knew this was
the place for me."
Joan Cole, the librarian,
never regretted her decision
to attend the college-even
though she remembers her
name was left out of the
program of a King Williams
Players production for which
she had made costumes. Her
life-long love affair ·with books
was nurtured here, and she
enjoyed the poetry group in
which she participated. "I
found the education I was
expecting here," Cole says.
Each of the graduates has
remained keenly interested in
St. John's after some five
decades away from Annapolis.
Their attachment was demonstrated by their eagerness to
attend the ceremony and
their ongoing support of the
college's efforts to recruit
Mrican-American students,
helping the college find new
ways to tell minority students
about St. John' s. As Wilson
says, many Johnnies find out
about the college through
word-of-mouth, often from a
relative or friend who attended
the college.
"Our job as alumni is to
get the word out-through
churches, sororities, communities, anywaywe can-that
St. John's provides an education for a lifetime," he says.
There may be no better
evidence of that than these
seven alumni .....
-
RosEMARY HARTY
�6
{FROM
THE
BELL
{FRoM
TowERS}
THE
MAcGYVER MEETS
''I'M READY FOR MY
THE JOHNNIES
BELL
CLOSE-UP' MR. ZLOTOFF''
The St.
John~ Story,
Quick CUTS of 4-5 students &
2 tutors as they open books
and begin reading in various
locations: dorm rooms, library,
etc. Possible FLASH CUTS of
author's names, Hegel, Plato,
etc. CUT to villainous East
German spies racing up
McDowell Hall stairs. CUT to
MacGyver hastily assembling
rocket out ofseminar chair,
shoestrings, and Coffee Shop
French fry grease. He shoots up
stairs to Bell Tower, rappels to
safety FADE OUT
It's fun to imagine what the
St. fohn's Story- the campy
student recruitment film made
more than 50 years ago-could
become in the hands of Lee
David Zlotoff (A74), the
creator of the popular TV hero
Angus MacGyver. Zlotoff,
who has enjoyed a career
as a screenwriter and
director since graduation,
volunteered his time and
expertise to write and direct
a promotional video for the
college- the first since a
second movie was produced in
the early Ig6os . After serving
Redux
Natalie Rinn (A05) was enlistedfor a starring role in Lee Zloto.ff's
movie. Here's her account oflife behind the camera.
for many years on the college's
Board ofVisitors and Governors, Zlotoffknewwell how
the college struggles to
explain itself to its various
audiences . Last year, he
proposed a new movie proj ect
to the board. Shooting took
place in Santa Fe and
Annapolis last fall. Now,
Zlotoff is supervising the
editing of more than 70 hours
of videotape into a series of
short videos that the college
can show at college fairs,
use as presentations to
potential donors, and post to
the college's Web site.
Unlike past films that have
tried to re-create seminar
discussions, Zlotoff's project
starts with tutors and students
"Now throw down your book like you just can't make sense of it,"
directed Lee Zlotoff from behind the camera.
So I did. And such was myweek, the week that the St. John's
promotional film crew became extended-stay guests on campus and
I became a movie star.
It all happened by chance. I sat in the Mellon courtyard on a warm
Sunday early in September. I was puzzling over a paper in the senior
lab manual. A young man approached me as I was crinkling my brow
looking over the reading.
"Would you like to do a screen test?" he
asked in a tone that lacked expectation.
Happy to set aside my confusion for a
moment and intrigued by the words ''screen
test," I accepted his offer. I was sat down in
front of a camera and answered questions
posed by Lee. After spurting answers in
response to his questions about "what is it like
to be a Johnnie?" I was told I would be contacted within a week and was sent on my way.
A week later, the call came. It was the young
man, Jared Krause, the producer of the
St. John's promotional film. He wanted to
know ifl would be willing to be the subject of
some scripted material for the film .
Apparently the look of confusion I wore
when Krause first spotted me was the type of
authentic St. John's experience they wanted to
be sure to include in the film . He told me that
they needed images that would create a visual
"I thought this
was something
that needed
doing."
LEE DAVID ZLOTOFF (A?4)
LEE ZLOTOFF CHECKS OUT THE VIEW FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA.
preparing for seminar. The
bells ring, and students walk
into the classroom. It ends ·
when the opening question is
posed. Interspersed in the
basic narrative structure are
interviews with students,
tutors, and alumni; scenes
of campus life and student
activities; and environmental
shots showing off the beauty of
Santa Fe and Annapolis.
All told, Zlotoffhas
already spent months on
the project, which he
describes as a labor oflove.
He ate in the dining halls
and coffee shops on both
campuses, hung out with students in downtown Santa Fe or
Annapolis, and talked with
tutors. He enjoyed reliving his
own student days through the
eyes of a younger generation.
"It was great fun to do
and a remarkably insightful
process," he says. "At
St. John's, everybody does
the same thing and in certain
ways gets the same sort of
thing; in another way it's
TUTOR NICK MAISTRELLIS LED A
MOCK TUTORIAL FOR THE NEW
totally individual. If I had to
title the experience it would
have been 'Chasing the
Paradox.' We tell students
what to study but we don't tell
them what to think. It's a small
school, but in many ways,
there is this amazing diversity
of opinions and suppositions
and life experiences that
people bring to them."
The college has remained
basically the same since his
student days, but Zlotoff
has noticed some changesparticularly in the students.
"When I was at the college,
there were students who were
at St. John's because they didn't
fit in anywhere else . On both
campuses today, I see a great
deal of awareness on the part of
the students about what the
college is about and what
they're looking for," he says.
What took Zlotoff away from
Hollywood to document life at
St. John's? "The college could
go out and hire someone to
produce a video, but they
wouldn't have had a clue how
to do a film about St. John's,"
he explains. "I thought this
was something that needed
doing."-$-
ST. JoHN's VIDEO.
- RosEMARY HARTY
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John's College. Winter 2 005
}
ST. JoHN's IN
THE NEWS
For those involved in the three
days of shooting on the
Annapolis campus, the Today
Show segment on St. John's
that aired December 30 might
have seemed disappointingafter all there was no mention
of great books, tutors, or seminars. A quick glimpse of tutor
Peter Kalkavage leading a
chorus, a seminar, a Waltz
Party in the Great Hall, shots of
crew on College Creek, and the
story of a "tiny college next to
the Nav~Academy"was over.
But brief as it was, the
story couldn't help but be good
press for the college, and about
6 million viewers watch this
most popular of morning news
programs. Roger Martin,
president of Randolph-Macon
College,hadspentasabbatic~
from his college in Ashland,
Va., to find out what life is like
for freshmen at St. John's. For
the f~l semester, he attended
seminars, rowed with the
crew team, and got to know
Johnnies. A Washington Post
story on Martin's experiences
caught the eye of an NBC
producer, and a crew came to
campus in mid-December.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
TowERS}
7
story of a student's preparation for seminar: sitting in various places
on campus reading, conversing with fellow students, looking
generally confused while paging through a reading. They thought I
was a good candidate. Because they would capture these images without sound bites, the pressure to perform would be minimal. I agreed
to his request and we arranged a date to do our first filming.
The day arrived. I sat in a bath of synthetic light and rested on the
quad while the production assistant applied makeup to my face. I felt
I was experiencing the clashing of two worlds: The world of St. John's
and the outside world that was straining to look in. Providing a
vvindow of exposure into the Johnnie world felt unnatural at first.
Could we, as props arranged to tell the Johnnie story, really communicate the essence of the Johnny experience? I was told to assume
my look of confusion as I sat in the quad and affectedly discussed a
seminar reading with classmates.
The lights glared, the camera rolled, and then, a funny thing
happened. Under a tent of surveillance and heat, I embodied all too
easily the confusion with which I was so well acquainted. Though the
scenario was staged, my two classmates and I
had so often been genuinely confused throughout our time at St. John's that to reproduce the
appearance of confusion, even in a feigned
discussion, was second nature. I then realized
very little acting would be required in order for
the film to communicate even a taste of true
Johnnie life.
Throughout the next week I spent several
hours with Lee and his crew performing
several takes of"seminar preparation." While
the repetition of takes at times grew tedious,
I was confident the finished product would
convey to the world outside something true
about our microcosmic haven. And I, for one,
was more than happy to reproduce that truth
under the lights. -$-
NATALIE RINN:
Two observations on the
experience: Students can summon a mid-week Waltz Party on
about a hour's notice. And students and tutors assembled for
a mock seminar will have a serious discussion on Thucydides
that will go on long after the
crew packs up ru1d leaves.
NPR's WeekendEdition
~so carried a short story on
Martin's experiences at the
college, as did more than 6o
newspapers. (An. essay by
Martin will run in a later
edition of The College.)
The college continues to
attract attention from a
perplexing assortment of
media. In September,
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
A
STAR IS BORN.
Cosmo GIRL! magazine
included St. John's on its
"first-ever guide to the so Best
Colleges for CosmoGirls."
Sometimes national press
attention is just a passing mention, but in the right context,
it's enough to make Johnnies
swell with pride. An Atlantic
Monthly article entitled "Who
Needs Harvard?" an~yzed the
competition to get into top
schools and mentioned St.
John's-in the company of colleges such as Bryn Mawr, Notre
Dame, and Oberlin- as "schools
[that ru:e] not in the top twentyfive, yet may be only slightly
less good than the elites."
Now that's good press.-$-
�8
{FRoM
THE
BELL
}OHNNIES-R-Us
A New Online Community for S]C
Alumni Awaits Members
The college is pleased to unveil a new online community created to
enable alumni to stay better connected to each other and to the
college. The address is: http://alunmi.stjohnscollege.edu. The page
can also be reached by clicking Alumni on the college's home page:
www.stjohnscollege.edu and following the link published there.
Shortly after launching a new Web site last year, the college also
rolled out an online alumni register, but after a rough start never
improved, the application was scrapped. The college chose
YourAlumni. com to provide a broader range of services to alumni.
The site does require registration to take full advantage of its
features, but alumni can still choose to hide all or some of their
personal information from public view. Register as a member, and you
can view the personal listings of all alumni who have also registered.
Alumni can add much more information than has been provided in
the paper directory, last published in 200I. There is space to add
occupation, employer, graduate school, birthday, and other information such as career changes, moves , books read or written, and births of
children. Johnnies can post their own photos and create a gallery of
their children, new home, pets, or vacation to Greece.
{FRoM
TowERs}
Other options:
• Take part in online forums.
• Submit alumni notes online.
• Find out about college news, chapter events, and college-wide
events.
• Search for members by multiple criteria: e.g., campus, class year,
location, occupation. (Please note that results will be limited until
more alumni become members.)
• View class homepages and photo galleries.
Another improvement of the new sile is ease of registration: in most
cases, alumni will not need to wait for approval from the Alumni offices
in Santa Fe or Annapolis- it's automatic. Even when staff intervention
is needed, action can usually be tal(en in one business day. Users can
also select their own passwords.
The college chose a membership-based application in order to
restrict personal information to the alumni community and protect
privacy. However, alumni can still access a slatic directmy-which the
college will update periodically-that lists alumni, class year, city,
and slate. While this information is oflimited use, it's the member
directory that should be genuinely useful in creating a community.
All it needs is members.
Contact the Alumni offices with any concerns or questions about
the site: in Santa Fe, Roxanne Seagraves at 505-984-6Io3 or alumni@sjcsf.edu; in Annappolis, JoAnn Mattson at 4m-626-253I, or
alumni@sjca.edu. -t-
THE
BELL
TowERs}
9
TRAINING DAY
EARLY LAST FALL, 2I NEW RECRUITS-MOST OF THEM FRESHMENCOMPLETED THEIR FIELD CERTIFICATION FOR THE ST. JoHN'S COLLEGE
SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM WITH A SIMULATED SEARCH MISSION ON
DECEPTION PEAK IN THE SANTA FE SKI BASIN. THE NEWBIES MADE THE
CLIMB TO I2,000 FEET AND COMPLETED FIELD NAVIGATION , BACKCOUNTRY
SKILLS, AND SEARCH TECHNIQUE TRAINING TO BECOME FIELD CERTIFIED
AND EARN THE NICKNAME "GROUND-POUNDER." WITH MORE R E CRUITS
THIS YEAR THAN EVER, THE COLLEGE TEAM CAN NOW FIELD MULTIPLE
TEAMS OF VOLUNTEERS. LEFT, ANABELLAASPIRAS (SF08) OF
WASHINGTON D.C., CAN NOW USE A TRIANGULATION MAP AND COMPASS
TO FIND HER WAY IN THE MOUNTAINS. ABOVE, NATE OESCH AND
RYAN GREENDYK (BOTH SF08) DO PUSH-UPS AT THE TRAILHEAD.
{LETTERS}
MISTAKEN NoTIONS
The story of Martin A. Dyer's being recruited
as the first Mrican-American student to
attend St. John's College, ofhis graduating in
I952, and of his now joining the Board ofVisitors and Governors, is inspiring. Mter all,
Brown v. Board ofEducation was not decided
until I954· When I arrived in Annapolis as a
freshman in I956, African-An1ericans were
still second-class citizens in Maryland.
The story of Martin A. Dyer reflects well
on St. John's College, on the students who
persuaded the college to agmit [him], and on
Mr. Dyer himself.
The college's "diversity initiative," by contrast, is consistent neither with the mission of
St. John's College nm·with the achievements
ofMr. Dyer. Defending the "diversity initiative," nonetheless , Mr. Dyer asserts in his
recent letter (Fall2004) that the college
should make a determined effort to recruit
more minority students, "because seminars
and classes achieve greater profundity and
richness when students of different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds bring their life
experiences and individual perspectives into
the conversation."
I must disagTee. To remain politely silent
would show respect neither for the college
nor for Mr. Dyer. To remain silent would trivi-
thing profound that any Asian or Irish-American or Je,vish or African-American student
has said in a St. John' s College seminar that
flowed from his or her "race, ethnicity, or
background." My own fellow-students
advanced our conversations by giving evidence of close reading and good logic. My
fellow-students' racial and ethnic characteristics made no discernible contribution to
their being able to read and think well ...
Mr. Dyer is a remaTkable man, and I am
like other Johnnies in respecting his
achievements and in tiling pride in him
and in his story ... .All men and women are
educable "l.vithout regard to the peculiarities
of their ethnic and racial backgrounds. It is
not our fellow-students' peculiarities that
are the teachers at St. John's College . It is
the great books that are our teachers.
alize the great books program, and it would
patronize Mr. Dyer. St. John's College exists
because, as its motto suggests, boys of all
sorts are equally capable ofbecoming men by
a single device, namely, by means of books
and balances. The Program Telles on books,
not on the alleged broadening effects of a
multi-cultural mi'< of students. Nor was Mr.
Dyer himself recruited to St. John's College in
order to provide his fellow-students with his
race-peculiar contributions. Such a suggestion is repellant. Mr. Dyer was recruited
because the students at St. John's at that time
found the then-prevalent rules of racial discrimination offensive. This was precisely
because they believed that all men are fundamentally the same, not that they are different ...
Mr. Dyer cannot and does not appeal now
to what all men have in common, however. In
departing from that premise, he departs from
the foundation on which St. John's College
stands. Mr. DyeT relies, instead, on the premise that different "life experiences" will somehow enrich the college's seminaTs. Is this an
empirical claim or is it a tautology? I assume
that Mr. Dyer means it to be an empirical
claim. If so, he must present proof. Unfortunately, no proof is possible. Neither Mr. Dyer
nor anyone else can present evidence of any-
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John's College. Winte r 2005
MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER,
CLASS OF Ig6o
The College welcomes letters. Letters may
be edited for clarity and/ or length. Please
address letters to: The College Magazine,
St. John's College, Box 28oo, Annapolis
MD 2I4o4. Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
}
MELLON GR.ANT
SuPPORTS FACULTY
A $soo,ooo grant from The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will allow St. John's College to raise faculty salaTies
and provide funds for faculty
study groups on both the
Annapolis and Santa Fe
campuses.
One of the college's most
important strategic goals is
to bring its faculty salaries
closer to the mid-range of
comparable liberal arts colleges. Attracting and retaining exceptional faculty, and
compensating them fairly in
cities with a high cost ofliving, are key to preserving the
college's discussion-based
education program and small
classes.
Almost important as
improved compensation is
the need to provide faculty
{ T HE
C o L L E G E .
with continuing opportunities to deepen their own
knowledge ofthe subjects
they are teaching. Funds for
study groups mll support
faculty members who plan
and organize the material for
the sessions, and compensate
faculty for the additional
time they spend in such
groups . In the past, study
groups at St. John's have
included topics such
as Apollonius' classical
geometry, advanced reading
in ancient Greek, and the
poems ofWallace Stevens.
St. f ohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
"This generous funding
from the Mellon Foundation
for faculty salaries and
faculty development mll
allow the college to demonstrate to our tutors and our
students, as well as to the
college community as a
whole, the value we place
on our faculty and the
commitment we have made
to them for the future,"
said Christopher Nelson,
president of the Annapolis
campus. -t-
�.
'
,--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
IO
{PHILANTHROPIA}
RINGING A BELL FOR
II
{PHILANTHROPIA}
ST. JOHN~ s
REUNION
CLASs LEADERS
Increasing Alumni Involvement
ell-ringers were all over town in Santa Fe last
317 phone calls, and there was a lot of ringing: they raised $2,245
December, but bell ringers of a different kindin gifts and pledges .
without the Santa Claus suits and red kettles-were
Tiffany Simons (SFo6), a phonathon veteran, gave an
also making appeals from Weigle Hall at St. John's
enthusiastic kickoff speech to first-timers . "Make sure alumni
College. Telephones rung in homes across the
understand that gifts of any amount are greatly appreciated," she
country as students participated in a phonathon
said. "If everyone on this list gave only five dollars, we'd be way
for the college's Annual Fund.
above where we were last year in terms of alumni participation."
The Annual Fund helps pay for tutors' salaries, health and
Students say they get a great sense of pride in volunteering for
counseling services, admissions, athletics, and campus
phonathons. Some start out reluctantly, afraid to make a phone
maintenance and, perhaps most vital to the group making the
call to a stranger and reluctant to disturb a quiet evening to ask
phone calls, student financial aid. Thition meets just 70 percent
for money. But when they secure their first gift, they beam .
of the cost of educating students, and about 6o percent of the
Melinda Miller-Klopfer (SFo7) has worked several phonathons,
college's students receive financial aid. A gift of $roo to the
and each time she riffles through the list of potential donors to
Annual Fund has the same effect as $2ooo in the endowment,
find alumni in California. She, too, is from California and taps
since the college draws a s% from the endowthe \Vest Coast connection to establish a personal
ment every year for operating expenses. Gifts to
association with the alumni she calls. Some she
'~
the Annual Fund can be put to immediate use .
has talked to several times, and even though they
Phonathons take place on both campuses
have never met, they catch up like old friends
toward the end ofthe calendar year, and again in
over the phone. Helping the college raise money,
the spring, as the college' s fiscal year comes to a
Miller-Klopfer says, strengthens her appreciation
close June 30. Alumni, students, and staff take
for St. John's.
parents~
tutor~
part in the calling. To heighten the fun and
"After all," Miller-Klopfer says, "my St. John's
foster a little gentle competition at the Santa Fe
education is a gift-from my parents, my tutors,
phonation, held on a blustery December
the financial aid office. An education of any
evening, students had bells next to their phones
variety is a gift, but a St. John's education is a
• -11:
"
0J~ce
that they could ring each time a call yielded a
blessing as well." "'$gift. The group of eight students together made
MELINDA MILLER-KLOPFER ( SF07)
-ANDRA MAGURAN
.. my St. ]ohn:S
education is a
g!ft-from my
my
thefinancial azd
...
RINGING THE BELL:
ZAcK BoRING ( sFo8)
AND MELINDA MILLERKLOPFER ( SF07) HIT THEIR
BELLS TO SIGNAL A "'YES"
IN RESPONSE TO THEIR
ANNUAL FUND CALLS .
{ THE
C o L LEGE .
St. John 's College . Winter 2005
}
ohnnies like talking
with other Johnnies.
They get a chance
to exchange ideas particular to the college,
and they understand
what a genuine conversation is. That's one reason many
alumni accept an invitation
from the Advancement offices
in Annapolis and Santa Fe to
serve as "reunion class leaders," joining Philanthropia
volunteers in making alumni
aware of their role in supporting the college. When your job
is to reconnect with members
of your class to strengthen
their ties to the college, it's
more fun than work .
Tapping everything from
{
nostalgia to technology,
J
reunion class leaders work at
bringing the St. John's experience back
to alumni who have gone on to other
pursuits five to fifty years after leaving
their campuses. "It's so easy to keep in
touch with old Johnnie friends - which is
why it's weird that a lot of them don't
realize how important it is to give back to
the school," says a new reunion class
leader, Anna Christenbury (SFoo).
One of the major goals of the volunteer
effort is to increase awareness of the
importance of the Annual Fund to the
college and increase the number of
alumni who make contributions.
Gifts to the Annual Fund are vital to
supporting the college's day-to-day
operations .
Often, serving as a class leader is the
first time some alumni have had an
opportunity to volunteer for the college.
"We're fortunate to have reunion class
leaders who are exceptionally enthusiastic
and energetic," says Suzanne Thornton,
advancement officer in Santa Fe. "Many
of them find it extremely rewarding to be
able to do something for the college."
A FAMILY AFFAIR:
CAROL PLAUT
RICK
(A79)
(A77)
AND
HAVE BOTH
VOLUNTEERED AS REUNION CLASS
LEADERS.
Is
EMMA PLAUT
(Ao7)
NEXT?
and aware of what's happening
at the college today. "I owe
St. John's a debt of gratitude,"
says Preston, an architect in
Washington, D.C. "It opened
me up to appreciating the
eloquence of an idea, of a
well-reasoned argument. I may
have felt oppressed by it all
while I was there, but now it's
a kind of heaven in my mind-a
golden, shimmering memory."
Christenbury, who has been
composing music since graduating, has more than a few
ideas on how to get members
of her class back to the
college. Assisted by other class members,
she's assembling digital photo albums
and organizing regional get-togethers.
The most important part of her job, she
says, is taking the time to explain to
alumni why it's important for them to
help support the college. Preston says
that the most successful outreach in the
past has been making and selling home
videos from college days.
Other reunion class leaders have sent
handwritten thank-you notes to alumni
who have made a gift, contributed
material for class Web pages, sent out
postcards with senior class photos,
and arranged class gatherings for
Homecoming.
Putting one Johnnie in touch with
another invokes the sense of community
shared at the college, and that's what
reunion class leaders strive to do:
encourage their friends and classmates
to keep giving to ensure that more
students can learn what it is to be a
Johnnie . --$-
"I owe St. ]ohn:S a debt
qfgratitude. It opened
me up to appreciating
the eloquence qf
an zdea~ qfa wellr~asoned argument. "
BRUCE PRESTON, CLASS OF
Ig6s
From Annapolis, volunteers are
recruited for ro reunion classes;
eight classes in Santa Fe have reunion
leaders this year. The college offers
training at Homecoming each year to
inform volunteers about the needs of the
college and to provide an opportunity for
new recruits to talk with past RCLs about
the program.
Bruce Preston, class of rg6s, said he
took on the job because he wanted not
only to reconnect with the college, but
also to become more directly involved
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
- RosEANNA WHITE
}
(Ao4)
�{T
I2
H E
C H .A I
{THE CHAIR}
R }
ABOUT A CHAIR
"The chair looksfine everywhere. "
A Visit to the Home ofa St. Johns Icon
BILLY COPPAGE
It's a family business, and has been since
Moses Clore started the company in I83o.
Mter a fire in I930 nearly put the Clorcs
out of business, Mrs. Herbert Hoover-a
summer resident-came through with a
loan. Since then, the operation's been a
strong one, aided by a small college that's
been one of its best customers.
This is the home of the St. John's chairor, to be precise, the three chairs that
have populated the Annapolis campus
since the Igsos and the Santa Fe campus
since its opening in I964. The seminar
chair is actually the Plain Master Chair.
Dorm rooms are furnished with the armless Plain Side Chair, and the dining halls
in Santa Fe and Annapolis are filled with
the Ladder Back Dining Side Chair. While
the factory makes tables and desks and
other furniture, chairs outsell everything
else, says Troy Coppage, a great-grandson
of E.A. Clore and the vice president for
personnel. "You just won't find a more
durable chair," he says, hefting one up
and showing off the construction.
Production is labor-intensive. It starts
in the lumber room, where wood is boiled
for about three hours, then placed in
form s that forc e the wood for the back
frame, arms, and slats into graceful
curves. The slats are fitted into the
grooved holes of the frame, as are the six
rungs for the bottom of the chair, which
connect to the front legs. No nails are
needed, except for one on each arm of the
Master Chair.
Mter the chairs are stained, they're
sent out to local residents who weave the
fiber-rush seats with which Johnnies
become so intimately familiar. Newcomers to this work sometimes surrender in a
few days. "It's hard on the hands," says
Coppage. ''I'd starve ifl had to do it."
The graceful arms of the Master Chair
go on last. Then the chairs are shipped,
most often to individual customers, but
also to big users like boarding schools,
seminaries, and inns.
BY RosEMARY HARTY
fit weren't for the signs leading the way, it would
be easy to miss the E.A. Clore Sons Furniture
Factory in Madison, Va. The view to the west is
of Old Rag Mountain, the most spectacular peak
in the Blue Ridge'- Mountains. Turn off the main
business thoroughfare of this town, follow a
driveway to the bottom of a little hollow, and you'll find
a very small factory where furniture is made the old-fashioned way.
{ T H E
C
o L L E G E .
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
OPPOSITE: "You CAN USE IT EVERY DAY,
AND IT'LL LAST IOO YEARS," SAYS
TRoY CoPPAGE OF THE ST. JoHN's CHAIR.
AT RIGHT AND BELOW: CHAIRS ARE MADE
THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY IN THIS FAMILYOWNED BUSINESS IN RURAL VIRGINIA, JUST
EAST oF THE BLuE RIDGE MouNTAINS.
ABOUT THREE HOURS OF HAND WORK GO
INTO EACH CLORE CHAIR.
Coppage doesn't know a lot about the
St. John's Program ("It's not a normal
college'?") but he likes seeing the Master
Chair featured on the college's Web site.
That was partly the doing of Mark
Neustadt, a marketing expert who's been
handling the college's recruitment publications. "It's a perfect symbol of how the
school differs from others," he says. "You
learn by sitting and discussing the books.
You learn for yourself."
But is the chair really comfortable?
"Wonderfully comfortable," says tutor
Eva Brann, who should know as well as
anyone. "You sit in them for hours at a
time, so it's good that they have a comfortable'bottom. And of course, they are
very elegant to look at."
And is it really sturdy? Yes, says Bryan
Valentine, the treasurer in Santa Fe,
who is in charge of buying new ones
when the stock of more than I,Ioo out
West needs replenishing. "The rungs
sometimes break out because students
always rest their feet on them, and the
backs have been broken out when they've
tipped over."
Billy Coppage, vice president of the
company, has made several trips to
Annapolis to deliver new or repaired
chairs. On a visit to Colorado a few years
back, he made a detour to Santa Fe just to
see the campus-and his chairs.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
So where does the Clore chair look
better, he's asked? In Santa Fe's
sun-drenched seminar rooms? In
historic McDowell Hall? He smiles
broadly and says in a voice dripping
with Virginia honey, "That chair looks
fine everywhere."-*
For more on Clore, visit the company's
Web site: www. eaclore. com
}
�{THE
{THE
PROGRAM}
PROGRAM}
EINSTEIN
COMES TO ST. JOHN'S
BY RosEMARY HARTY
URTIS WILSON (HA83) BROUGHT
Einstein to St. John's College.
That is, during Wilson's
tenure as dean of the college in
the late Igsos, he decided that
Einstein's theory on special
relativity deserved a place in the Program. "The
idea of tackling difficult things was not foreign
to the Program," Wilson recalls. "All sorts of
things could be attempted, but what was important was learning to do them in a way that students feel some accomplishmen\ in them. We
didn't want to bamboozle them by talking over
their heads."
Working with tutor L. Harvey Poe (A52), Wilson wrote a manual designed to lead students
through the math and the major concepts of the
I90S paper. The manual was introduced in I959
and used at least until I964, when Wilson joined
the faculty in Santa Fe and later, the University of
{ T H E
C o L L E G E .
California. When he returned to Annapolis in
I973, seniors in math tutorial were reading the
paper. "That was an important shift, and I was
really glad to see it. It motivates students- 'this is
really the paper that Einstein wrote? And I'm
reading it?' "
Beautiful, simple, mind-boggling-the words
St. John' s tutors and students use t o describe Einstein's paper-help explain why so many Johnnies
find reading the paper a capstone of their years at
the college. But it was once thought ''too modern, too difficult, too complex" for students,
recalls Santa Fe tutor Peter Pesic, who has taught
the paper about half a dozen times. As a physicist,
of course he was familiar with Einstein's theory,
but he had never read the I90S paper before
coming to the college.
''It was one of the discoveries I made at St.
John's, to encounter Einstein in his own
thoughts, his own words," he says.
S t. fohn's College . ·w inter 2005
}
{ T H E
CoL LE G E.
St. Jo hn 's College . Winter 20 05 }
IS
�I6
{THE
PROGRAM}
{THE
"Special theory is a
little gem. "
patience, even more so than intelligence (though that does
not hurt, of course) . Patience is needed for both running
experiments and figuring out what to make of the end results.
SEEING A PROBLEM
Erin Hanlon (SFo3)
Studying Einstein's paper did not influence my decision to
become a scientist but it has had an impact on how I think
about research questions.
I had been accustomed to reading scientific papers a couple
of times over and thereby getting a general sense of the theory
and any equations. But with the Einstein paper I had to carefully go over each word to make sure I understood what he was
saying-so much of it was counterintuitive to my mind. I
remember staring hard at the board and frequently interrupting
whoever was presenting in order to ask questions so that I could
better shape the mental illustration I was trying to form.
The properties of electrodynamics addressed in the special
theory of relativity do not have a direct effect on my research as
a plant eco-physiologist. But it is the process, the process of
seeing a problem, coming up with possible solutions and
working through them all until one that holds up is found, that
turned out to be my most important gleaning from this paper.
The most important thing that you need to bring to science is
CHALLENGING AssuMPTIONS
Richard Green (SF87)
Probably the most radical thought that comes from the rgos
paper on special relativity is that it forces one to rethink the
concept of simultaneity. Assumptions about simultaneity seem
so basic that it is difficult to be aware that one is making
assumptions. How interesting that one can be unaware of basic
assumptions that are fundamentallyWI·ong.
Richard Green is a chemist workingfor the US. government on
issues related to difenses against chemical warfare agents.
"Ones learning
how to make
another small
step_, then maybe
another step
ifierthat."
C oLLEG E .
S AM KuTLER ( AS4 )
Erin Hanlon is a Ph.D. student in biology at the
University of Utah.
In Annapolis, Dean Harvey Flaumenhaft
"We didn't assume that our students knew
has led the senior math tutorial on Einstein
algebra back then," he explains, ''and the
many times. Although Flaumenhaft's speworst thing we did was waiting until senior
cialized field of study has been political phiyear to teach calculus-too late to use in
losophy, a framed copy of the Einstein-on-asenior laboratory."
bicycle photo hangs prominently in his
To Kutler, Einstein's theory is simply
office, and Flaumenhaft holds this particubeautiful. ''It has two postulates. One is that
lar Program author in high esteem- not just
if light is emitted it doesn't matter if the
for what he thought, but how he thought.
light is coming right at you, going away
Einstein characterized himself as a "slow
from you, or standing still with respect to
thinker" who pondered his theories long
you: it's still going to come at a single speed.
and hard for many years before something
The constancy of the velocity of light is one
emerged. Approaching Einstein in the classprinciple, and the other one is the relativity
HARVEY FLAUMEN HAFT, DEAN
room also requires patience and time.
principle, which is that the laws of physics
"One's learning how to make another small
have to be the same; there's no special frame
step, then maybe another step after that. If
of reference."
we can take just a couple of really good steps
Long b efore he worked out his theory on
toward beginning to understand those fundamentals, one
paper, "Einstein didn't think that Newtonian physics made
starts to think in a way that's much deeper."
any sense," says Kuder. Poincare, Lorentz, and Fitzgerald
"Special theory is a little gem," says Annapolis tutor Sam
were all thinking along the same lines, and Poincare might
Kuder (class of 1954) , because seniors can study it for a
well have beaten Einstein to the punch. But Einstein was
term- one truncated by the writing period and perhaps
the first one to determine that "since we can't find the
aether, there's no need for it."
tainted by the post-essay letdown -and emerge with a fairly
good understanding of the basics. Adding the paper to the
" This is a great blow to empiricists like Francis Bacon
Program was a change that was enabled by the college's
who believe you keep experimenting and experimenting,
earlier decision to stop extensive instruction in algebra.
and you're very slow to theorize. Einstein didn't obey those
{ THE
PROGRAM}
St. John 's College · Winter 2005
}
rules. He theorized first and the
experimentation came later. He
loved his theories, and he
believed in them."
Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell
guided seniors in math tutorial
many times in his 38 years with
the college, and led one exceptional preceptorial for Graduate
Institute students taking the
math and science segment.
"Some of them were accountants, and some were English
teachers, and they would all get
up to the board and work through
the equations . It was very exciting-I still get letters from those
students," he says.
Over the years, Swentzell has
assembled a collection of notes
that he uses to supplement the
paper; they're enormously popular with Santa Fe students. One
of his favorite examples is helping students make sen se of Einstein by getting them to figure
how fast they would have to drive
a car to get it to shrink and fall
into one of the cracks on the
road. "They get a big kick out of
that," he says.
Even after all his years of working through the paper 'vith students, Swentzell finds there are
some concepts Einstein presents
that just "hit you in the stomach
sometimes."
"You can see how it's all
derived, but then to imagine
walking around this world of
ours and as you're walking down
Two THINGS
Laine Conway (SFot)
I was, while reading Einstein, fairly obsessed with the
work of Kurt Go del, and so my memories are doubtless somewhat tainted. Still, two things in particular
stand out for me from reading Einstein:
r. The equation "e=mc 2 " is far from being
mysterious and arcane. Instead, it falls neatly,
elegantly, and almost unobtrusively out of the
preceding equations.
2. Einstein later (re) did his calculations for
relativity using only algebra; the original equations
use calculus because Einstein was, at the time he
wrote the paper, studying calculus!
The other thing I recall is how much I liked Einstein.
I'm thinking, here, of a line from The Catcher in the
Rye: "What really kno cks me out is a book that, when
you're all done reading it, you wish the author that
wrote it was a terrific friend of yours, and you could
call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.
Laine Conway; having completed an MFA in
Dramatic Writing, has returned to math (and Marx)
and is studyingfor a Ph.D. in economics.
PROVING THE ABSURD
David] Macdonald (SFg3)
Einstein's 1995 paper on special relativity was certainly one of the highlights of my time at St. John's,
and not just because it seemed to prove the absurdthat our notion of absolute space and time was an illusion. What I found most exciting was the simplicity of
the reasoning behind it. The step-by-step proof, from
the premise (Michaelson and Morley's observation
that the speed oflight is constant) to the conclusion
(that the length of an object varies according to its
speed relative to the observer) , was accessible even to
a college student like me with no more than a basic
knowledge of calculus. I felt like we were proving the
absurd with very simple , rational tools.
David Macdonald is a composer who also teaches
music theory at the Manhattan School ofMusic. .
{ T HE
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St. John 's College. Wi nter 2005
}
the hall, to suddenly think that
what you're calling 'now' means
a different set of events in the
universe than for somebody
who's sitting down in their
office. Everything changes.
That's the part," h e says, and
stops to chuckle, " that's just too
weird. That's when you have to
go home and sleep on it and get
the equations out to guide you."
The Nike adage "just do it" fits
with Peter Pesic's approach to
teaching the paper to Santa Fe
seniors. " Some tutors try to go
backwards, but it's hard to do
that without spending a long
time on review. So we plunge
into it and then take extended
digressions in electricity and
magnetism. We can drag out
magnets and coils and try to
bring to life where Einstein
was starting from with his
questions."
The paper may have seemed a
risky proposition to introduce
four decades ago , but it's well
within the grasp of today's students, says Pesic. "The heart of
his deduction can be done with
nothing except algebra, " he
says, adding that each time he's
taught it, even those students
without great skills in math have
risen to the occasion.
A leisurely pace is needed for
Einstein; up to 30 class sessions
in Santa Fe are invested in the
rgos paper. "That's quite a long
time, and a lot of time is needed
�{THE
PROGRAM}
{THE
"JYe can understand a lot
about geniuses and we can
participate in their thinking.
It;wt talces some zvork. "
GREAT IDEAS
Alciba Covitz (Ag1)
My senior year math tutorial was led by Winfree
Smith. Although I very much liked and respected
Mr. Smith, it was not a very good tutorial. One
student in particular refused to accept any aspect of
non-Euclidean geometry. Mr. Smith was patient at
first, but he was clearly not in the best spirits and, as
the semester progressed, the clash between the two
of them became quite pointed. We came to Einstein
with that as our rather contested and cantankerous
foundation.
At that stage in my college career, I was still on
the fence about what I would do, in terms of what
field to pursue i.n graduate school, try law school, do
a post-bac and try med school, pursue my interest in
journalism, etc. I remember that Einstein's language
seemed to be as much tied to metaphysics as to
physics. His ideas about the actual workings of
the universe and his semi-hidden, semi-mystical
cosmology seemed all jumbled together. I tried to
dis aggregate them, but with little luck. This, as I
recall (together with the mind-breaking steps he
assumed between the lines of his proof), helped to
convince me t11at it was best to pursue what I took
to be the foundations of all pursuits: the manifold
origins of the theoretical underpinnings of great
ideas. I chose to pursue this with the idea of a
constitution in the fully-contested world of politics.
for students to express their perconclusions on electromagnetic
plexity," continues Pesic. "The
radiation led Einstein to wonder
problem that emerges requires
what would happen if a source
having to reconsider the evidence
of electromagnetic radiation-a
of your senses in a very deep way.
light bulb, for example-wereWith Einstein, you don't so much
moving and he stood still. "And
understand it as you get used to it.
of course, you discover it doesn't
It flatly contradicts everything
matter," says Flaumenhaft.
that seems to make common
Einstein wasn't such a good
sense."
mathematician says FlaumenWatching students struggle
haft. "He was imaginative, he
with Einstein, Pesic sees the
took simple notions and mulled
best characteristics of Johnnies
over them, and he revolutionized
revealed in their discussions with
what we know about the world,"
each other. "They are not v-.rilling
he says.
to take some expert's word for it,
There's a strong correlation
instead, they want to see whether
between studying Einstein and
it's really true," he says. "They're
approaching nearly everything
An assistantprofessor ofpolitical science at the
intelligent and open-minded, and
else in the Program, from basic
University ofRichmond, Alciba Covitz teaches courses
they want to understand deeply."
assumptions about human freein constitutional law, civil rights, and ci'villiberties.
The types of questions tutors
dom to the laws of the physical
and students ponder in class can
world. "And that is that you just
be both wondrous and perplexing, agrees
can't'take it for granted-you have to think
Harvey Flaumenhaft. "What does it really
about; you have to examine whether it's
mean to say it's 5 o'clock in two different
really true," Flaumenhaft says.
Einstein~
places? \XThat does a law of nature have to
Curtis Wilson, who as tutor emeritus
look like to be reasonable?"
continues his life-long study of the history of
science, says Einstein's revelations were as
Students have the time to be patient and
shocking to the world as those of Coperniplod through the interesting questions
cus, Newton and Galileo. "There is a
Einstein's paper raises. " One ofthe delights c
relativity, usually called Galilean relativity,
of senior math is that Einstein's paper is
that says that whether the solar system is
short, and we spend a lot of time reading
moving or sitting in one place in absolute
through it line by line. It's so concentrated
space you can't tell, because everything
that what you're doing is unpacking the
goes on exactly the same way whether it's
significance of very simply stated assumpmoving or not. Here was a large branch of
tions that turn everything you've been
science that said you can't locate anything
thinking about the framework of the world
in absolute space, you can only say that
upside down," he says.
PETER PESIC, TUTOR
bodies move relative to one another and if
Senior math tutorial should start with
one body is accelerating instead of moving
a so-minute "quick-and-dirty review" of
uniformly, you can say that it's accelerating
Maxwell's Equations because Nla,"'CWell's
"Wzth
you don't so much
understand zt as
you get used to it.
Itflatly contradicts
everything that
seemJ· to rnake
common sense. "
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St. John 's College. W inter 2005
}
PROGRAM}
CuRTIS WILSON (HA83)
with respect to absolute space- in Newtonian physics , acceleration is real, the forces are real.
"That was kind of astonishing to people because they
thought the earth was not moving: 'I walk on this ground, it's
perfectly stable, towers are not toppling, and so forth. That
seemed like firm common sense. That's why Luther spoke of
Copernicus as 'that fool.' The earth moves!-how ridiculous
can you get? But of course Galileo and then Newton show
that everything works exactly the same way, mechanically,
whether we're moving or not."
By the time Einstein started questioning things, most
physicists "were as firmly convinced that there was an aether
as back in Luther's day people were convinced that the earth
stood still."
Einstein was able to think about light moving through the
aether in a different, imaginative way, and that made all the
EINSTEIN IN PoETRY
Anna Perle berg (SFo2)
The most amazing thing about the rgos paper is that it's all
algebra. Einstein could have worked the whole thing in calculus,
but instead he makes it simple-once, that is,,you get the dozen
or so steps he leaves out between equations. And Mr. [Ralph]
Swentzell brought a wide-eyed fascination to the subject (as all
the best teachers do) that made it matter. He was wonderful at
coming up with "real" examples applying these obscure
theories-swimmers, twins in spaceships, trains in tunnels.
One of the things Mr. Swentzell said that stuck with me was
that Einstein needed to be poetized in order to be brought to a
larger audience . Here's my attempt:
II. Relativity
T = cp(w)~(T-w~hc2)-Lorentz transformation for time
"*'
Yet it's all predictable,
and so smooth a ride in the end;
time-dilated by a few tokes
I faced the following:
A train (of course a train) pushing c, trapped
or not trapped in a pre-Freudian tunnel,
depending on passenger or spectator.
And they're both right. They're both right,
goddammit. The sober mind boggles.
But as I spmwled on the floor after two hours of work
and saw the clock's fingers tap out fifteen minuteswell, it's synchronicity, that's what it is.
Everything's happening the same everywhere,
just not at the same time.
And not at the same where, either.
How-much-not-the-same-time,
how-far-from-the-same-where,
.
though, is only algebra. And for mankind
it all goes to zero. Fm electrons or stars, a different story,
haiku or epic; but here on Pascal's fulcrum,
balanced between infinite and infinitesimal,
one feels less wretched than weighting.
It's all about trains,
though their timetables must be thrown out
· thewindow. "Hurryhome,"
I say to an absent lover, "or at least
start traveling at three-quarters c away from me."
I stand on the platform and watch you go by
getting smaller and smaller, more and more part
of my past.
{ TH E
difference. "He tried to think about sitting on the hump of a
wave. Just sitting there at 30o,ooo kilometers-persecond, what would it be like?" Thought experiments like
those led Einstein to new questions. "He gets rid of the
aether and says space and time are what we're talking about."
Even with his many years of studying science as his foundation, Wilson says he can still be "befuddled" by the
subtleties of the paper when he stops to think about them.
But it's not a bad state to be in, he concedes, adding a rationale that seems in a broad sense to cover the whole point of
choosing a college '"rith a program like St. John's in the first
place.
"We can understand a lot about geniuses," Wilson says.
"And we can participate in their thinking. It just takes
some work."
Anna Perle berg is at work on an MFA in poetry at
Wichita State Universi~y.
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St. John 's College . Winter 2 0 05
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�20
{ATOMIC
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2I
THE NEGOTIATOR
From the Seminar Table to International Relations
BY RosEMARY HARTY
~--
HESE DAYS NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGIOO) LIVES
in Tokyo, where she directs the Department of Energy office and serves as Energy
Attache to the U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
In September, she received a Service to
America Medal honoring her for her success-at the age of 28-in negotiating bilateral agreements with Russia that led to
stronger security measures for that
country's nuclear material and weapons stockpile. She's the
mother of an n-year-old daughter, newly wed to a Marine, and
ambitious enough to follow her career in public service as far as it
will take her.
But it all started very modestly with an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As a college student, she was assigned
to a project tracking and cleaning up so-called "legacy waste"
from the lab where the atomic bomb was developed in the I940S.
In the lab's early days, materials like cobalt or cesium were
dumped into nearby canyons and carried by rainwater into
surrounding areas, she explains.
"My primary job was to get people to sign access agreements for
the government to come on their property, do a site survey, and if
necessary, clean it up and restore it," she explains. With her clipboard and her I.D. badge, Nelson-Jean was like a young Erin
Brockovich, traveling through the Los Alamos area, visiting
homes, mnches, and Indian reservations. One man, in his gos,
lived in a mobile home on a large tract ofland. "He was extremely
paranoid and wouldn't let anyone on his property," she recalls.
Nelson-Jean visited with him, listened to his stories, and, after
about a month of visits, left with a signed access agreement. "He
used to be the locksmith at Los Alamos during the time of Oppenheimer-he knew it all," she says.
Nelson-Jean had a family connection to Los Alamos. Raised by
her father, who had a military career, she was born in Morocco
and had lived in Spain and Italy. Mter retiring from the military,
her father went to work in nuclear engineering and was at Los
Alamos when Nelson-Jean was in college. Nelson-Jean landed
summer internships, founded the lab 's first student organization,
and was soon recruited by the lab's nuclear nonproliferation area.
Here, her language skills were a plus: She had learned Arabic as a
child and continued studying the language in college. She began
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
translating documents from Arabic to English-and, since some of
the information was determined as classified, earned a security.
clearance before she had a bachelor's degree. Mter graduating
from Grambling State University with her degree in political science, she went to work full time at the laboratory for one of the
defense contractors installed at LANL.
While she was working at the lab, Nelson-Jean applied to the
St. John's Graduate Institute in Santa Fe. "I really wanted to hone
my critical thinking and writing skills," she says. She had just
applied to the GI in Santa Fe when she was asked to take a temporary job working at the Department of Energy headquarters in
Washington, D.C. As a short-term contractor on loan from the
lab , she helped coordinate a nonproliferation exposition on
Capitol Hill. She met then-Secretary of Energy Federico Pefia.
"He asked me if there was anything I ever needed to come and talk
to him about it." Nelson-Jean said she'd love to work for the DOE,
and shortly after returning to New Mexico, she was called for a job
interview in Washington. Mter she joined the EneTgy Department
(still as a contractual employee), she put her graduate degree
plans back on the front burner. "Once I found out there was a
St. John's in Annapolis, it made it a lot easier to move to Washington. I was really sold on the GI," she says.
Status as a full-fledged federal employee came the month before
she graduated from the GI. Nelson-Jean was hired as a project
manager in the DOE's Materials Protection, Control and
Accounting Program. She was assigned to projects geared to helping Russia protect its nuclear facilities-and an estimated 6oo
metric tons of weapons-attractive materials in the country. Later,
her work came under the jurisdiction of the National Nuclear
Security Administration.
The two nations continue to work cooperatively to secure
Russian materials, but certain agreements had not been signed
when Nelson-Jean joined the effort. She believed that only face-toface meetings would facilitate negotiations, and she soon found
herself leading a delegation of U.S. security specialists and
scientists to the Arctic Circle. "I flew on Russian airlines, on
planes with bald tires. It's worse when you have 30-degree-belowzero temperatures, and the runway is a sheet of ice. The guest
houses were livable, but when you turned the water on, lots
of brown gunk came out," she recalls.
St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
In the negotiations, Nelprograms, technical center
son-Jean was at a disadvandesigns, and construction
tage-not because she lacked
schedules for the facility.
a science degree and not
Her award was a nice plus,
because she is an Mricanbut Nelson-Jean modestly
American woman. Instead,
says the real reward lies in
her youth worked against
the work itself. In her new
her. "In Russia," she says,
role in Japan , nuclear ener"they respect expeTience
gy is just one of the issues
moTe than anything, and
she handles. Her n-year-old
when you're young, how
daughter, Rachelle, attends
much experience can you
an American school in
have?"
Tokyo and may have inherIt was in overcoming that
ited her mother's skills.
barrier that heT Graduate
"When it comes to negotiatInstitute experiences proved
ing, she has it down pat,"
most helpful. She was able to
says Nelson-Jean. Her husCrOSS the boundaries of age and ethnicity How DO YOU BREAK THE ICE IN A ROOM
band, Patrick, is stationed about IO hours
because she knew that genuine conversation FULL OF RussiAN SciENTISTS? NICOLE
away at a U.S. military base in Iwakuni.
cultivates trust and respect. "The ability to NELSON-JEANWOULDTALKBOOKS.
Nelson-Jean has been adapting to a new
learn about different cultures, to really hear
culture again, by watching, listening, and
different perspectives without judging, to
respecting differences. "When dealing
communicate and talk with other people-all
with Russians, you can slam your books
were developed sitting around the seminar
and throw your papers-in Japan it's very
table at St. John's," she says.
civilized and very quiet. The Russians,
She had also read Tolstoy at the college
they're tough, and they're very good at negoand was able to convey true interest and
tiating. With the Japanese, they deal with
appreciation for Russian history and culture.
things by not dealing with them so directly."
NICOLE NELSON-JEAN (AGIOO)
Her knowledge of other classics in the WestWhen pressed, Nelson-Jean acknowledges
ern canon gave her the chance to talk with
that the world is perhaps a little bit safer for
the Russians about something other than weapons-grade plutothe work she has done. When she made her first trip to Russia,
nium. "Many of the people you deal with who have reached high
"September I I hadn't happened yet." What the NNSA seeks to
levels with scientific backgrounds are also very well read in the
prevent-unsecured nuclear material falling into the hands of a
classics," she explains.
terrorist group-seemed a more distant threat than it does today.
One of the best outcomes of the negotiations was a new cooperThe terrorist attacks sharpened her focus and have helped shape
ative agreement with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Another
her career. "I feel better that our cooperation is stronger with
was the establishment of the Kola Technical Center, the first
Russia today," she says. "It's made my work even more satisfying.
multimillion-dollar service and training center for securing
I feel like I'm making a difference. I hope I am."-$nuclear material and weapons in Russia. Nelson-Jean worked with
the Russian navy and Russian contractors to develop training
"In Russia they
respect experience
more than anything. "
{ THE
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St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
�22
{ATOMIC
JoHNNIES}
{ATOMIC
JoHNNIES}
BEYOND
THE BOMB
Johnnies Pursue Research Questions at Los Alamos
DY ANDRA MAGURAN
INCE
J.
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER LED A TEAM
of scientists in developing the atomic
bomb at a laboratory created on the site
of a former boarding school in I943, it's
been difficult for the sprawling Los
Alamos National Laboratory to promote
an image of being anything other than a
secretive place where nuclear weapons
are developed. Santa Fe senior Chris
Horne witnessed this view firsthand last summer when he
went to work at Los Alamos as an intern and encountered a
gathering of anti-war protesters. It was a bit ironic, he
thought, considering he was assigned to the lab's project
focused on efforts to find a cure for HN.
About 40 miles northwest of Santa Fe, Los Alamos
National Laboratory is the nation's leading science
research facility, currently operated by the University of
California for the Energy Department's National Nuclear
Security Administration. Together with Sandia National
Laboratories, the laboratory is the state's largest employer,
and many Johnnies work there as scientists, researchers,
project managers, and in various support roles. Many more
Johnnies have taken advantage ofthe laboratory's student
internship program, which employs about 2,ooo students
every year.
{ TH E
CoLLEGE .
The development of nuclear weapons is, of course, still a
major part of the laboratory's work, and some Johnnies are
part of that. But Horne says that the public is generally
unaware of the scope of research conducted at Los Alamos.
Horne worked as a bioinformatician on a project devoted to
using LANL's worldwide database ofHN virus information
to better understand the strain responsible for the AIDS
pandemic. In the summer internship, Horne used mathematical models and computer programs to annotate a
viral genome. He organized raw genetic data-namely, the
basic nucleotide series constituting the DNA of his
assigned virus-into charts, graphics, and text to create a
resource for medical and pharmaceutical researchers.
Since he recognized certain repeated portions of the series
in the viral genome he was annotating, he was given liberty
to name them as he wished. Inspired by the Iliad, he
gave the sequences names such as Agamemnon, Leitos,
and Euryalos.
Along with gaining experience in a scientific setting,
Horne enjoyed adapting his seminar skills to the professional environment of the lab. He gave two presentations,
one for the Annual Summer Student Symposium, a showcase for work done by summer interns. Since he'd been
annotating a viral genome, Horne created a poster displaying the sample gene record for one of the 77 genes he'd
St. John's College . Winter 20 0 5
}
examined. His other presentation-on SciENTIST EDWARD TELLER (CENTER) AT
ers can speak, to understand the
FuLLER LoDGE IN Los ALAMOS IN I946.
open reading frames, a type of gene
mechanics of this speech, and to alter
found in DNA-was part of a series of T ELLER WOULD LATER BECOME KNOWN AS
these mechanics to develop more
THE "FATHER OF THE HYDROGEN BOMB."
meetings that were held to update
efficient [computer] languages," says
members of his immediate group on
Hurwitz.
contemporary issues in genetics and
In his two years interning at the lab ,
virology. Mter his 45-minute talk, he
Hurwitz published six papers and was
ably defended his work in the question
the primary author for four of them. (A
period-even though he felt a bit intimsample title: "End-to-End Performance
idated facing a room full of scientists.
of Io-Gigabit Ethernet on Commodity
An internship in computational
Systems" published last year in IEEE
science was an equally rewarding expeMicro.) He was also part of a team that
Gus HuRWITZ (sFog)
rience for Justin "Gus" Hurwitz
set a new record in the Guinness Book of
(SFo3), who completed two internships before going on to
World Records for the fastest transmission of data over the
work full time at the lab. During his junior and senior years,
Internet (2.38 billion bits per second). "The lab is a serious
and for a year after graduation, Hurwitz worked at the lab
place to work," Hurwitz says, and a place where even Johnconducting experimental and theoretical research in areas
nies without a graduate-level scientific background can
of high-performance computer networking and protocol
contribute a great deal. "If you show your mentor that you
design in the Advanced Computing Laboratory, or ACL,
are capable of contributing to the work, the only limits will
part of the Computer and Computational Science Division.
be those you place on yourself."
Hurwitz's work in high-performance computer networking
In the working environment of Los Alamos, Hurwitz
was designed to improve the performance of the supercomfound similarities to the intellectual environment
puters used in nuclear science simulation.
fostered at St. John's. "The laboratory is a place where
"In more Johnnie-centric terms, I was a computational
people embrace inquiry and challenging questions," he
philologist, working to increase the rate at which computsays. He never encountered anyone who thought that the
"The laboratory is a
place wherepeople
embrace inquiry and
challenging questions. "
{ TH E
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St. John's College. Winter 2 005
}
�,-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-- -----
{ATOMIC
{ATOMIC
}OHNNIES}
DEBRA RuTHERFORD
HAS SPENT MOST OF
HER PROFESSIONAL
LIFE AT Los ALAMos.
liberal arts were useless; to the conweapons play in the lab-like me in my
trary, many of his co-workers with scifirst few months; you \vill meet moral
entific and technical backgrounds 'vish
delusionists , and those who work \vith
they had had the opportunity to read
the deadliest materials mankind has ever
the classics. "One of my co-workers
known and don't care, for whatever
always had a book \vith him. We had a
reason, to ask these questions. You \vill
number of good talks about Austen's
DEBRA RuTHERFORD ( sF8o)
meet idealists, who believe that they are
Emma, Descartes, and Locke."
helping to prevent more weapons from
c
Now that he's left the laboratory,
being built by maintaining the ones that
Hur\vitzhas turned his thoughts more
we already have," he says.
frequently to the difficult ethical questions he has previ"In short, the lab is a place on the edge of the greatest
ously avoided. A Johnnie who works at ~os Alamos \vill
moral dilemmas that I have ever encountered. Those
meet people whose views run a \vide gamut. "You \vill meet
questions are rarely asked or discussed, but they are always
people who have been at the lab since the Cold War for
there under the surface. And, if you scrape down below the
whom nuclear weapons were a necessary reality that could
surface, you \vill find as many understandings, acceptances, justifications, avoidances, and explanations of these
not be questioned. You \vill meet skeptics who question the
role that nuclear weapons played during the Cold War and
questions as there are employees at the lab. But, the most
the logic behind the arms races; you will meet
common response that you \vill find, nowadays, is, "I don't
people who do not understand the role that nuclear
know.'
"The intellectual
rigor. .. is astounding. "
{ THE
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St. fohn's College. Winter 2005
}
JoHNNIES}
'Yyworkis
tangential to kzlling
people and deJ'troying
the world"
''My work is tangential to killing peoin the area of nonproliferation. The reasoning and diplomatic skills she learned
ple and destroying the world. It is not
Gus HuRWITZ
at St. John's have proven as useful to her
the clean morality of a book, the ponas her scientific and technical training.
derous morality of Augustine, or the
technical morality of Kant; and it is far
"I participate and lead international
and domestic advisory panels and working groups, which
scarier than even the worst of that which Nietzsche could
require the skills one learns in seminar," she says.
conceive .... Students of philosophy in general \villlikely be
Rutherford feels the lab's most famous work, the Mansurprised by just how introspective most scientists are
about their work."
hattan Project, was a significant contribution to the end of
In addition to continuing as a consultant for the computWWII. But she is also impressed that the spirit of inquiry
er science company he founded while still in high school,
and the level of scientific excellence fostered in the
Hur\vitz is now making plans to attend law school with an
lab's early days have continued into the fields of physics,
eye to one day working at the intersection of science and
chemistry, biology, engineering, and mathematics. The
people she works \vith and leads at Los Alamos are proud of
law.
Unlike Hur\vitz and Horne, Debra Rutherford (SF8o)
their work and believe they are contributing to America's
freedom, she adds.
can provide few details about her work at Los Alamos,
where she took a short-term job after graduation
"The intellectual rigor \vith which national and internabefore going on to earn a master's degree in chemical and
tional scientific endeavors are pursued is astounding,"
nuclear engineering from the University of New Mexico.
Rutherford says.-$-She has worked full time at the laboratory since rg8g in
areas of nuclear technology
and nuclear material management-in short, helping to
safeguard the nation's nuclear
stockpile.
A clue to why she can't
say much about her work
may be found in the title she
holds now: Project Leader and
Nonproliferation and International Security Analyst in
the International Research,
Analysis, and Development
Group at the lab. What
Rutherford can say about
her job is that she leads a I2nation working group on the
need for critical experiments
AT
Los ALAMos, Gus HuRWITZ
CONDUCTED 'RESEARCH, WROTE
PAPERS, AND HELPED SET A NEW
WORLD RECORD FOR INTERNET
SPEED.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005}
I
I
�{HOMECOMING}
{HOMECOMING}
HoMECOMING NOTEs:
ODYSSEY
Merit Award winners: William A.
Carter, class of 1940; Charlotte King,
class of 1959
Honorary alumnus: Glenn Housley,
class of 2004 (For more on awards,
see the Alumni Association section,
p. 47·)
IN OCTOBER
Homer Attracts a Crowdfor Annapolis Homecoming
ou couldn't say that Homecoming 2004 in Annapolis
lacked drama. Not with a
dozen or so costumed
students acting out the
homecoming scene of the
Odyssey in Iglehart Hall. Alumni happily
played the role of hungry suitors, noshing
on Greek appetizers offeta cheese,
hummus, and olives while they awaited
the banquet.
You couldn't say it lacked pizzazz-not
with a flock of plastic pink flamingos
leading the way to the picnic tent
("Kalypso's Isle"), where ceramic pigs
graced the table and calypso music played
on a steel drum had revelers dancing in
the buffet line .
·
And you certainly couldn't say it lacked
a good story, not with a dozen members
Y
of the class ofi954 , the last all-male class
to graduate at St. John' s, back on campus.
Rallied to attend by reunion class leader
and Annapolis tutor Sam Kutler, the
boisterous group matched much younger
Johnnies in their enthusiasm for the
weekend's festivities. On Saturday afternoon, they lingered in the private dining
room of Randall Hall telling stories and
drinking wine until they could be coaxed
outside for a group photo.
Arnold Markowitz stopped to comment
on changes in the main dining hall, where
bow-tied waiters did the serving in his
day. "Chairs," he observed. "We didn't
have chairs. We sat on benches." The
group disagreed on a few things. One
remembered milk cartons being lobbed at
the students by the servers; another was
Homecoming lecture: "Human Rights
from Antigone to Rosa Parks," Peter
Weiss, class ofr949
certain pitchers of milk were set on the
table.
Other members of the class were
pleased to see that the Chinese paintings
of a royal couple installed during President Dick Weigle's era were still hanging
in the dining room. The portraits were
among the few things that haven't
changed a great deal since these class
members attended the college . When
they were on campus, Campbell Hall was
brand new, Mellon Hall wasn't even a
blueprint, and students directed their
energy toward thwarting attempted
restrictions on their social lives that
today's students wouldn't believe.
With 450 students-compared to about
125 in 1954-the student body today seems
very large. "We were a small class," says
Bernie Jacobs, of New York City. "Only I7
of us graduated. It was a brief ceremony."
Several of the alumni remembered the
turmoil when women joined the student
body in their sophomore year. Eric
Crooke was one of several members of
the class to marry one ofthe first female
Johnnies. He and his wife, Sarah (class of
1955), live in Silver Spring, Md., and he's
been back to campus frequently since
graduation.
A nephew of tutor John Kieffer
(HA7o), Crooke learned of the college
through his uncle, but he came to
St. John's ofhis own choosing. "I've
never regretted it," he said, though he
heard many, many times, "you look like
John Kieffer" when he got to Annapolis.
Biggest turnout: Class of rg84, with
39 members registered. Annastasia
Kezar, assisted by Lenore Parens,
mustered the good showing, in part
by compiling for class members a CD
of '8os hits including "Rock the Casbah" and "Rock Lobster." A close
second was the class of rgg4, with
25 registrants.
Gerald Geddiman came all the
way from California for the
reunion. He hadn't visited the
campus since the day he received
his diploma under the Liberty
Tree. " I like what's happened," he
said, looking around. "I do like
the Greenfield Library. Next, I
want to go over and see Woodward
Hall-what's it called now?"
Santa Fe tutor emeritus Robert
Sacks-with Kutler one of two
members of the class to become
a tutor-was swept up in the nostalgia of the afternoon. "Fifty
years-it doesn't seem that long,"
he said.
The 1954 class members were
among the most honored guests at
what turned out to be the biggest
Homecoming yet in Annapolis .
More than 400 Johnnies attended
all or part of the weekend. At
Saturday evening's banquet, the
gymnasium was transformed (via
cardboard columns) into a palace,
where an energetic group of
students led by Julie Janicki (Ao6)
reunited Odysseus and Penelope
once more.
Inspired by the performance,
one alumnus giving his class toast
raised his glass to a true honorary
Johnnie. "Let's hear it for
Homer!" he said, starting the
alumni chanting: "Homer!
Homer! Homer!"._
Theme tchotchke: handy St. John's
backpack-good for any odyssey
TOP TO BOTTOM: STUDENTS GREET GUESTS TO
THE PICNIC TENT; MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF
I954;
-ROSEMARY HARTY
PENELOPE AND ODYSSEUS, TOGETHER
AGAIN; AND MINGLING AT THE SATURDAY
COCKTAIL PARTY.
I945, AND
I949o PONDER A
CHARLES NELSON, CLASS OF
JIM CONRAD, CLASS OF
PHOTOS BY G ARY PIERPOINT
SEMINAR QUESTION.
{ THE
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St. John's College. Winter 2005
}
{ THE
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St. John's College. W inter 2005
}
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{THE
FACULTY}
{BIBLIOFILE}
IN ARisTOTLE~s FooTSTEPS
pARADISE LOST: REGAINED
A Healthy Marsh Enhances Freshman Laboratory
PARADISE LosT, r668-rg68 :
THREE CENTURIES oF CoMMENTARY
BY RoBINWErss (sFGI87)
On an autumn day in
Annapolis, at the foot of the
Boathouse, marsh grasses
wave along College Creek, a
testament to the health of
this six-year-old wetlands
restoration site. Cattails,
pinecones, and fist-size
mushrooms grow vigorously along the banks.
On their own initiative,
students often use the
marsh for projects such as
reseeding oysters, Environmental Club activities,
marsh cleanup , and independent research. Since
efforts to restore the grasslands have taken hold,
"we have more fish, crabs,
heron ...everything," says
tutor Kathy Blits.
Trekking through a
muddy marsh into a murky creek
isn't for everyone. But a few
weeks before the season turned,
some students in freshman lab
and a couple of tutors-enriching
the practica side of their biology
curriculum- took the plunge.
"Some ofmystudentswentin up
to their necks," says freshman
lab tutor Margaret Kirby. Using a
huge net supplied by tutor Jason
Tipton, they emerged from the
creek with four- to eight-inchlong fish . "We were just lucky
that we got really cool ones,"
Kirby says.
Thtor Christian Holland (A84)
recalls a handful of students
"leaping into the water to catch
a bunch of fish for the laboratory
tanks" after Holland showed
them Tipton's techniques. His
students continue to observe
these 40-some fish, well past the
fish sequence oflab.
This method of shallow
fishing with nets, called seining,
isn't new to the college, nor is
the aquarium in Mellon Hall,
which has been augmented over
the years by lab director Mark
"Small ugly;
insign!ficantfoh
consumed
[Aristotle :S}
thinking. "
TUTOR JASON TIPTON
Daly. In 1999, the college undertook a pilot project to restore a
portion of the College Creek
shoreline, with funding from
several sources including the
city of Annapolis and Chesapeake Bay Foundation. The
project proved successful in
increasing the number and
variety of wildlife habitats along
the creek and filtering stormwater runoff. When Tipton started
teaching three years ago, he was
thrilled with the pocket marsh
on campus, specifically its
possibilities for, what he calls,
"the pursuit of slippery prey."
The ubiquitous minnows aside,
Tipton names sunfish, silversides, croaker, yellow perch and
"FISH ARE A WORLD
I
KNOW," SAYS
ANNAPOLIS TUTOR JASON TIPTON
pipefish as some of the fresh
water and marine life plentiful in
this estuary.
"Fish are a world I know,"
Tipton says. An ichthyologist,
with a master's in evolutionary
biology and a Ph.D. in philosophy, Tipton wrote his dissertation on Aristotle's On the Parts
ofAnimals. Before coming to
St. John's, he spent a year in
Greece as a Fulbright fellow
tracking down, and finding,
Aristotle's fish. " One doesn't
have to be an ichthyologist,"
Tipton says, to stumble around
in the marsh.
''I'm paraphrasing, but
Aristotle says: 'Don't be afraid
to root around in the organic
world; there are gods here too.'
I love that idea. There 's something about getting your hands
dirty; Aristotle suggests something rhetorically powerful
about that."
More than 2,300 years ago,
Aristotle paid careful attention
{ THE CoLLEGE. St. John 's College . Winter 2005 }
to the eating, mating, and
breeding habits of fish in
their habitats. "Small,
ugly, insignificant fish
consumed his thinking,"
he says. Jars of alcoholpreserved goby and
blenny-Aristotle's one
fish, found to be two
through Mr. Tipton's
research- line a windowsill in Mellon. On one
jar, crowded with sturdy
grayish-brown fish , each
about two fingers long,
the label reads: " Bay of
Kallori, Lesvos, 4 km. N.
ofPyrrah, 75 m below s
altmarsh."
Nearby, tanks of marsh
fish from College Creek,
some wiggly, some mellow, inspire ongoing
student examination.
Atop one tank, a note
warns observers not to
touch or "you might get a case of
nasty microbes."
Freshman lab assistant Allison
Hennigan (Ao6) explains the
truth behind the joke: "Little
white crustaceans, about the
size of a dime," had attached
themselves to the gills and eyes
of certain fish. Eventually, the
arthropod parasites would have
worked their way into the blood
vessels on the gills or, after
sucking eye fluid, entered the
bloodstream through the eyes.
Biocalm, an anesthetic, seemed
to get the fish drunk, recalls
Hennigan: "The fish were doing
backllips. The parasites seemed
drunk, too ." The drug worked,
and the fish are healthy.
Students don't dissect these
specimens. Instead, Daly goes
to a local seafood store to get
" kitchen fish " such as rockfish,
flounder, and bluefish, for
students to dissect in lab. -t-
Edited by Earl Miner, co-edited by
William Moeck (A80), corresponding
editor Steven Jablonski
Bucknell University Press, 2004
BY G. A u GusT DErMEL, SF2004
---·--hen William Moeck
graduated from
St. John's in 1980,
he could not have
envisioned one
day co-editing a
massive volume of commentary on
Paradise Lost. First, like many Johnnies,
Moeck had developed "a healthy contempt
for secondary sources." Second, he had
skipped the Milton reading and seminars.
"I r em ember fearing that Milton would
be a boring or difficult author," Moeck
says. "Samuel Johnson once said that while
everyone could recognize the greatness of
Paradise Lost, no man ever wished it
longer."
When Moeck moved to New York after
graduation, he kept his Shawcross edition
of the poem along with his other Program
books. Fe eling guilty that he had never
gotten around to it, Moeck toted the book
along on vacation many years later and
discovered that he had missed a truly great
book. "I recall with vividness that on
vacation in 1988 I found clever and
Paradise Lost 1668-1968
,.HREE CENTURIES OF COMMENTARY
"
tdttor Enrl M1ner
Co·Edttor Wtlham Moec.k
Corresponding £d1tor Steven Jablonski
admirable the speeches of Satan.
I r ecall how moving the domestic
tragedy of Adam and Eve to be,
when Adam practically insults her
for wanting to go off to the garden
alone. If we are able to read
Genesis as literature nowadays ,
Milton must be given partial credit
for that change, fm he has told a
better story than the Bible itself,"
he says.
Reading Milton inspired Moeck
to look into graduate school, and
he later entered a doctoral progTam in English literature at City
University of New York. As he
wrote his dissertation, he began to
examine how passages from other
works influenced Milton. His dissertation adviser connected him
with Princeton University professor Earl Miner on the project that
would eventually become Paradise Lost
1668-tg68: Three Centuries of Commentary.
When he first conceived of the book
more than a decade ago, Miner (who died
last April) envisioned a reference book of
allusions on the Milton epic. Miner and
an early collaborator on the project,
Steven Jablonski, had begun collating representative work from scholars of Milton.
When Moeck joined the pToject in 1997,
"a different sort of problem emerged in
terms of defining what an allusion is."
"Imitation, echo, copy, allusion-even
parody and farce-all form a network of
words with related meanings . They imply
some sort of relationship between one text
and another that can be studied and
qualified. But how rigorously can one
establish how they differ from each other?
Is an unconscious borrowing also to be
considered as related to allusion?"
Moeck provided an example in the
oft-quoted passage where Satan says,
"The mind ... Can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven."
"Has Milton here borrowed unwittingly
from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's.
Dream, where one character says 'I'll
follow thee , and make a heaven of h ell'
(2.1.243)? The character in question ,
Helena, is merely the frustrated lover of
Demetrius, and not the diabolic perverter
of humankind. Would Milton in his lines
thus more likely be responding to the
{ T HE C oL L EGE. S t. John 's College . Win ter 2 005 }
IT TOOK HIM IO YEARS TO GET TO THE READING,
BUT PARADISE L OST EVENTUALLY CAPTIVATED
WILLIAM MOECK.
metaphysically-oriented Hamlet instead,
who also says ' There is nothing either good
or bad, but thinking makes it so' (2.2.24849)? Or do we have to look elsewhere for
Milton's sources, in Thomas Browne, for
example, or in the writing of the stoics?"
Together Miner and Moeck combed
through the available work on Milton
and chose commentary on each of the
12 books ofMilton's poem. A research
library unto itself, the book includes the
best commentary from Patrick Hume
(r6gs) to Alastair Fowler in rg68.
Now a pTofessor at Nassau Community
College in Garden City, N.Y., Moeckis
reading Augustine , Freud, Darwin, and
Marx with students in an interdisciplinary
program. The contempt he once held
for secondary sources has diminished
considerably, but he still believes in the
value oheading original texts before the
commentary of others.
"I think the very idea of such a reading
of the classics is embattled nowadays , and
probably the strongest line of defense
against the pre-professional training
vaunted by most undergraduate schools
would be to invoke the shibboleth ' critical
thinking,' " h e says. ~
�,-----------~-------·~- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{ALUMNI
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
I've just completed r6 weeks of
training in getting certified as a
volunteer hospital chaplain."
CoMMITTED TO HELPING FAMILIES AND CHILDREN
Linnea Back Klee, A67, Balances I deals and Details
BY CAROLINE KNAPP, SFoi
rom her fourth-floor
office in San Francisco's Mission District,
Linnea Back Klee
(A67) has sweeping
views of the city, from
Nob Hill across the bay to the
shipyards of Oakland. Seagulls and
ragged palm trees flap in the foggy
air; down below, high school
students straggle down the sidewalk,
swinging their backpacks. Construction cranes sway up over the traffic
lights of Van Ness.
Inside, order reigns . Klee's deskfrom which she directs one of the
city's largest nonprofits, administers
an annual budget of$ so million, and
manages a staff ofr3o-has perhaps
three stacks of paper on it, each
corralled in its own tray. There are
no aging Post-its, no toppling files,
no stray paperclips. Even her
awards, bronze plaques from the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
and various nonprofit groups, are
neatly aligned on the bookcase.
The Children's Council of San
Francisco, Klee's professional home
since 1993, strives to make sure that San
Francisco's working families can meet one
of the most basic needs of daily life : affordable , high-quality child care. The council's
referral programs put parents in touch
with child-care providers, its education
programs train caregivers, and, perhaps
most crucially, its subsidy programs
administer the monthly payments that
put child care within the financial reach of
low-income mothers and fathers.
But, not to lose sight of the social
environment in which all these individual
choices are made, the Children's Council
is also a major advocacy force in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Washington.
Through public policy lobbying and
grassroots organizing, Children's Council
employees and volunteers do their best
to bring the needs of working parents,
child-care providers, and children before
lawmakers and voters.
A "QUIET"
JoHNNIE, LINNEA BAcK
KLEE FOUND HER VOICE IN ADVOCACY.
her sophomore year, Klee wrote a
letter to tutor Barbara Leonard
(HAss) about the difficulties of
being a quiet Johnnie, packed her
bags, and went on to earn a degree
at George Washington University.
Klee's journey from the ether to
the grassroots can be traced in part
through her higher degrees: after
GWU, she earned a master's in cultural anthropology from Catholic
University, then a Ph.D. in medical
anthropology from the University of
California, San Francisco. Klee had
considered following her husband,
Earl Klee, into teaching. But her
thesis project, on cultural perceptions of illness in history, refused to
be contained in the classroom:
by1983, the AIDS epidemicwas
exploding like a shell over San
Francisco, and suddenly the most
interesting sources weren't in the
library. They were in the hospitals and in
the streets. Thus began Klee's decade of
~eldwork in medical anthropology.
An introvert no more, she interviewed
women about their attitudes toward childbirth, former GM workers about their
alcohol abuse, children of alcoholics
about their parents. In 1985 she joined a
colleague at the newly founded Center for
the Vulnerable Child at Oakland's Children's Hospital, where she continued her
work as a researcher with the center's target population: children in foster care. "I
loved going and meeting all those people
and talking to them," she says.
But her work at the Center for the
Vulnerable Child was leading her toward
another emerging talent: As program
coordinator of an innovative and perpetually underfunded nonprofit, Klee began
writing grants. By the time she left in 1993
to become the executive director of the
Children's Council, she had become very
"People arefinally
starting to get it. "
LINNEA BACK KLEE
(A67)
At the helm of all this, Klee, a gracious,
attentive woman with a generous smile, is
the first to admit that her work is not for
everyone. "It goes from the sublime to the
ridiculous," she says. "I've got employee
parking problems .in front of me one
minute, then major public funding
questions."
But Klee's background has made her
comfortable in balancing ideals and
details . Although she attended St. John's
40 years ago, she still remembers loving
Euclid and the freshman-year program.
"I really loved the curriculum," she says a
little wistfully. "But I just couldn't talk. I
was an introvert in an extrovert's college."
Klee followed her brother, Eric Back (A6s),
to Annapolis in I963. But midway through
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
continued
}
HEl\'RY SHRYOCK JR. was recently
awarded "The President's Call
to Service Award" by the
President's Council on Service
and Civic Participation.
1 935
"I'm still working- practicing law
for the past 66 years and I hope
to get it right soon!" writes
RICHARD WOODMAN.
Milestones: GIL CRANDALL writes
that he celebrated his 8gth
birthday on July r, 2004, and
classmate MARTIN RAuscH
celebrated his goth birthday
on July 8, 2004.
ERNEST HEINMULLER writes to
say that the " 'keep reading, keep
learning' credo ofWinkie
[Stringfellow Barr] is still alive:
1943
At 85, MILTON PERLMAN is still
reading many hours a day: "The
most important benefit of the
Program is a love of reading. I am
still hoping that at least the first
part of Proust's novel will be
restored to the fourth-year list."
GEORGE R. TRIMBEL JR. hecame
a great-grandfather with two
great-grandsons born one week
apart in October 2004.
NoTES}
eager for the homecoming: "We
have not seen him for three years ,
given our own driving limitations-twenty minutes to and
from church each Sunday is the
longest, with Rita on 24-hour
oxygen, etc."
GEORGE WEND continues to
participate in the Baltimore
Alumni Association chapter's
book discussion group. The
summer before last, he took a
trip to Peru to visit Machu
Picchu, the Andes, and the
Amazon. This past summer,
he took a two-week river cruise
from Moscow to St. Petersburg.
THE REV. FREDERICK P. DAVIS
writes from California that his
son, David, is expected back
home from a convalescent center
early this spring after suffering
several health problems, including a broken leg and infections
that settled in both legs. The
Rev. Davis and his wife, Rita, are
continuedJr:om page 30
good indeed at nonprofit management and
her grant writing was paying the salaries of
the entire staff.
In her I I years with the Children's
Council, Klee has supervised its expansion
from a neighborhood organization with
35 employees to its current status as a
statewide player with 130 employees and its
own building. She's been gratified to see
public opinion shift on child care ("people
are finally starting to get it").
Today Klee's work continues to walk the
line between the big picture and the individual story. These days, she's the one who
Enjoying the retired life,
JOAN CoLE just returned from an
Alaskan cruise. "The glaciers,
mountains, lakes, and wild life
are too impressive for words .
Residents spoke about their
state with the enthusiasm and
pride of staunch St. Johnnies,"
she writes.
gets int~rviewed for articles, and at work
she goes weeks without seeing a child. She
writes the position papers for the council's
public policy committee and sits on the
policy boards of sister nonprofits. But she
is acutely aware that the 30o,ooo children
on the waiting lists for public assistance
in California represent not only budget
dollars but also individual families with
complex, often pressing needs.
What more, she's aware that the work
she strives so hard to keep organized, there
in her office with the city laid out all
around her, is work that truly can- in the
most simple ways- help many of those people. Nonprofit management is a good field,
{ TH E
CoL L EGE .
St. John's College. Winter 2005
HILDRErH BECKER (HILDY
SMITH) writes: ''I'm a happy
grandmother again: grandson
Alexander Paige, son of rg88
[Annapolis] alumnus CHRISTINA
MYER PAIGE. He joins his sister
Adela, who is now nine. Christina is working full time as a high
school math teacher. What have I
been doing since attending the
college? I pursue my studies in
philosophy and other esoteric
pursuits."
1962
JOHN FRANKLIN MILLER is president of the board of the Library
of American Landscape History.
1957
1 949
rg6o
rg68
PETER CoEN (A) is currently
employed as an assistant public
defender in Bradenton, Manatee
County, Florida.
ANTIGONE PHALARES (SF) spent a
week in Santa Fe in July staying
with ALLISON KARSLAKE LEMONS
(SF68), DoN (SFGigr), and two
she says, "if you're interested in pursuing
the Good. That's what we do."
As for less practical pursuits of the
Good, Klee still hasn't given up on the
idea of St. John's. She and her husband, a
professor at UC Berkeley, visited Santa Fe
last summer and are already thinking that
perhaps, when they retire, getting a few
more degrees might not be amiss . "I
wouldn't have any problem talking in
seminar now," Klee says, laughing. --$-
Caroline Knapp lives in Berkeley,
California, and is an editorial assistant at
the University of California Press.
}
�{ALUMNI
sons Micha 1md Than, and a
St. Johnnie , JAKE, a junior at the
Santa Fe campus. "We gathered
around the television listening to
the speeches of the Democratic
convention . It was delightful to
be amongst politically like-minded friends. Allison and I enjoyed
a three-night, do-it-yourself
retreat at the Holy Archangels
skete near Canones in northern
New Mexico. We had lunch with
Claudia and Sam Lancombe and
reminisced and sputtered over
the political mess-o-potamia our
government has gotten us
embroiled in. Both Allison and I
fac e the empty nest; this fall her
sons leave for Italy and Hungary.
My daughter, Heather, is already
in Paris."
1969
LINDA M. BERNSTEIN (A) writes:
"Our first grandchild was born in
August. We are fortunate our son
and his wife and their new son
live in Philadelphia so we can
enjoy their company and watch
him grow. Meanwhile, our third
son has left home to become a
freshman at Guilford College in
Greensboro, N.C . We would
be 'empty-nesters' but our
middle son has moved back
home until he gets established
after graduating from Boston
University last May."
JoHN GOODWIN (SF) is now
marketing director at the Plaza
Hotel in Las Vegas, N.M. "I am
also the president of Habitat for
Humanity in Las Vegas llJ.ld with
any luck will be single soon! "
RACHEL HALLFORD 'I'REIMAN (A)
decided it was time to bring The
College up to date: "I divorced in
2001, and after my son entered
college, sold the house in New
York and returned to Lewistown,
Montana, where my brother
lives, last December. I am now
coordinator for the Retired and
Senior Volunteer Program covering Fergus County and Judith
Basin County. Since that is only
30 hours a week with no benefits,
I also work online 20 hours for
benefits . My oldest, Grace , is now
21 and a senior at the University
of Pennsylvania, majoring in history. My son Andrew is 19, a
sophomore at the University of
North Dakota, majoring in Air
Traffic Control and on an Air
Force ROTC scholarship, planning to go career Air Force. I love
being back in Montana. I was
born in Lewistown (left when I
was six) and therefore , for many
of the older folks I identify myself
by my grandfather, mother, and
her siblings. That slots me in the
scheme of things. I'm fortun ate
my family was liked back thenpeople have long memories out
here!"
If you've lost track of BRAD ARMs
(A), it's because he and his family
have been on the move: "2004
was the year of moving for
us ... three times! After living in
various parts of the country
based mainly on the job ... we
finally had a chance to pick where
we wanted to live . We had always
liked Oregon for its beauty and
friendliness .. .so in early 2004,
we sold our house in Simsbury.
Since the house sold quicker than
we expected, we moved into a
1930 Colonial, which we had
fixed up as an investment
property. We were there for two
months while we made arrangements to move West. And then it
was on to Lake Oswego, Ore.,
where we rented a house while we
decided exactly where we wanted
to live and what to buy. Finally,
on November 30 , we closed on
our new house in West Linn,
which is about ro miles south
of Portland. The house is comparable in size to the one in
{ TH E
CoLLE GE .
{ALUMNI
NoTES}
Simsbury. It is built on the hill,
which gives it a view of Mt. Hood
in back. Jen & Chris have started
classes here locally. Their interests are in computer animation
and web site design. Meanwhile,
we are settling into the new
house and learning about all that
Oregon has to offer."
ROBIN KOWALCHUK BURK (A) is
at West Point: "I have been
teaching at the U.S . Military
Academy for the last 3 years,
first in the computer science and
information technology
programs and now in the systems
engineering department, where
I currently advise groups of
seniors applying Multiple
Objective Decision Analysis and
simulation techniques to projects
for real-world clients. I've also
begun doctoral studies at SUNY
Albany in the Information
Science program, with a focus on
intelligent software agents and
their application to group
decision making. Best regards to
the staff at St. John's and to all
the alumni that ROGER (A74) and
I missed seeing this past weekend
at Homecoming."
· .. .... · · · · · · · · · · · · · · .. .. · · · · · · · · · · · .. ·
1973
DONNEL (A) andJANET O' FLYNN
(A74) moved to Hamilton, N.Y.,
home of Colgate University, on
Oct. r6 , 2004. Donnel will be
rector of St. Thomas' Episcopal
Church . Janet will work as a
therapist, probably in the public
schools. AIDAN O'FLYNN (Aos)
graduates in May. Kathleen
O'Flynn is now an EMT and
looking forward to joining a
New York ambulance crew.
1 974
MARIE CLARK AVERY (SF) has
four sons : Justin, 20; David, 18;
Josh, 14; and Tyrel, rr. She
taught for the Jicarilla Department of Education, Apache
Government. A founding
member of the National Campaign for Tolerance, she also
received the National Nomination to the Wall of Tolerance in
February 2oor. The wall, she
notes, was designed by Maya Lin
and is similar to the Vietnam
Wall. She started her master's
degree program in rggg and
most recently has been a special
education teacher in Espanola.
1 977
CLIFF ADAMS (A) is divorced
and has three children: " I live in
Germany, I'm traveling a lot,
and loving life."
JUDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF)
recently visited classmate ELIZABETH (COCHRAN) BOWDEN (SF)
at her home in Marblehead,
Mass. The two celebrated their
birthdays and being friends for
more than half their lifetimes at
the Kripalu Yoga Center in the
Berkshires. Judy also watched the
continued
AGGIE JACOBS (SF71) has been engaged in the
type of work that reaps real rewards: "Mter
three years of composing music for Hebrew
prayers , I am about to release a CD of my work.
I don't expect to make any money from it, but
I'm hoping that my music will find an audience." -*'"
S t. John 's College . Winter 2005
}
33
FRoM HINDU FESTIVAL To HIGH ScHooL BASEBALL
Alex Shear, SFoo, Explores Lffe Through Documentaries
BY R o s E MARY HARTY
LABoR oF l~ovE
M
NoTES}
lex Shear (SFoo) has
had front-row seats
to two very different
phenomena united
by the fanatic zeal of
their participants.
The first is the Maha Kumbh Mela,
a Hindu festival believed to be the
largest gathering of individuals in
the wOTld; 27 million people made
the pilgrimage to wash away their
sins at the Sangam at Allahabad in
January 2oor. The second is the
National High School Baseball
tournament in Japan, a two-week
contest which draws the rapt
attention of the whole baseballcrazed country every August.
In India, where he recorded
digital sound for the film Take Me to the
River in 2001, Shear worried about being
crushed in the crowds, never quite managed
to get enough to eat, and met a famous yogi
who had been holding his right arm up in
the air for 30 years. "His fingernails were six
inches long," says Shear.
Working on the baseball film, Kokoyakyu, in Japan last summer, Shear ate
sushi, worked long hours, and met
Takashima Kantoku, the most successful
high school baseball coach of all time.
"Many Japanese consider him a living
samurai," says Shear. This time Shear was
producer of the project, with responsibilities in fund-raising, accounting, research,
interviewing, and when it was his turn,
getting everyone lunch.
AB different as the two proj ects and
cultures are, Shear found a common thread
in the power of devotion to bring people
together: "There were some similarities in
that both were types of national fe stivals.
In India we had millions of people from
every possible state, and all these different
cultures were represented. The high school
tournament in Japan is the only national
event like this. It's on TV all day, 24 hours a
day and 20 million people tuned in to watch
opening ceremonies.
Only recently has Shear been able to
devote himself full time to documentary
filmmaking. After graduating from St. John's
in 2000, h e landed a job at a dot. com
company in his hometown of Boston. But
company Projectile Arts . He
helped secure $roo,ooo in grants
from foundations and sponsorship
from United Air Lines. " I like the
creative aspect, working out the
content of the film ," he says.
"And I like the
entrepreneurial aspect, starting
something from scratch, and
against all odds, making
it happen."
Shear has always been a big
baseball fan . "I felt there was ver y
little known in the U.S. about
Japanese baseball and it could be
a great way to learn about a very
mysterious culture. It's a filmmaker' s dream: passion, history,
culture, youth, sports- it really
has it all," he says
The crew interviewed players, coaches,
cheerleaders , and fans, and filmed some of
the most intensely played baseball Shear has
ever seen. The work could be grueling; the
t emperature in the stands reached rr7
degrees one day. One of the highlights for
Shear was meeting Hidcki Matsui,
who earned the nickname " Godzilla" in
Japan before going on to become a N.Y. Yankees star.
Immersion in such fanatical national
fervor gave Shear a lot to think about. "As
an American, I don't think I would want my
son to play ro hours ofbaseball a day. It's
kind of like milit ru:y sch ool."
Shear isn't sure he's found his career.
Low-budget documentary filmmaking, he
says, has its pros and cons. "Pros: it's
creatively and intellectually stimulating, you
are your ovm boss, and you get to travel and
meet fascinating people. Cons: no money,
job security, or vacation time; it takes
forever, and it's a nerve-wracking rollercoaster ride .
"To me the satisfaction comes from
having an idea, which a whole bunch of people tell you can't be done , and going out and
proving them ·wrong."
Take Me to the River is showing at film
festivals; Shear hopes it will soon be
distributed nationally. AB for the baseball
film , he and director Ken Eng hope
PBS will pick it up for broadcast after
production is completed this spring. _..
ALEX SHEAR, SECOND FROM RIGHT, SUITED UP
FOR A PRACTIC E GAME.
': .. it:S a nerve-wracking
roller-coaster rzde. "
ALEX SHEAR ( SFOO)
when two of his good friends told him they
were headed to India to make a film , Shear
was desperate to go along. " I took a month
off, paid half my airfare and volunteered to
work for free doing sound," Shear says.
" It was ll1l incredible experience."
A few days after Shear got back to his
promising job in Boston, the company
folded and laid everyone off. He moved to
New York to be involved in post-production
on Take Me to the River, and took a few
temp jobs. After September rr, Shear went
back to Boston to sell ads for a tabloid. "The
stories are short, you can read it on the
train , and the ads get a lot of results, which
h elp ed us all make money."
But the next time his filmaker friend
Kenneth Eng called, Shear was ready to
commit to the project on Japanese baseball.
This time he quit his job and devoted his
sales skills to raising grant money for the
proj ect through the nonprofit production
{ T HE
C o L LEGE .
St. John 's College . W inter 2005
}
�34
{ALUMNI
KARL STUKENBERG (SF) is director of Psychological Services at
Xavier University's Psychology
Department in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He is also a tenured faculty
member in analytic psychology.
As CRAZY AS IT SoUNDS
W
ILLIAM (BRAD) HODGE (SFg2) is working for
the Department of State, managing security
issues for U.S. embassies in almost a dozen
countries. "It's fun, challenging, gets me
traveling all over the world, and reminds me
of one thing I remember from the St. John's program, 'That
which doesn't kill us makes us stronger,'" he writes. ""When
that is not challenging enough, I volunteer as a police officer
with the Washington, D.C., police department. Yeah, it's as
crazy as it sounds."+
cows changing pastures while
visiting LYNNE GATELY (A) in
Randolph Center, Vt., where
Lynne is a librarian. Lynne and
her husband, David, run a dairy
farm and a maple sugar business.
Judy also visited KEITH HARRISON (SF) at his home in New
Hampshire. Keith teaches law at
Franklin Peirce Law School. Judy
has been enduring Minnesota
weather for more than six years
now and is longing for a temperate climate '-vith mountains.
Anyone with job leads in New
Mexico, please contact Judy!
ELIZABETH KOCSIS (A) has retired
to a "hobby farm in north central
West Virginia (my husband,
Mike Kingston's, idea) where we
home-school our two boys
Steven (13) and Frank (g). I'm
active in the inclusive state,..vide
home-schooling organization
(wvhea.org), which recently
(2003) celebrated a political
victory in the state legislatureelimination of a rule requiring
home-schooling parents to have a
college degree to home-school
high-school-age children.
}ULIA PERKINS (A) writes: "My
daughter, MARGARET HENNESSEY,
joined the class of ' o8 in
Annapolis this year, adding to a
bunch of alumni children in
Annapolis now: Emma Plaut,
Ao7, daughter of Richard Plaut
(A77) and Carol Katrina (A7g);
and Bekah Ross, daughter of
Steve (A78); and Jessie Perry,
1982
PATTI NOGALES (A) recently
started her second year as an
assistant professor of philosophy
at California State University in
Sacramento. "The kids and I are
finding that Northern California
has some advantages. I would
love to hear from classmates."
Ao8, daughter of Steve Perry
(A78). Maybe there are others?"
1979
GERALDINE M. KLINE (SF) was
recently elected to a six-year term
of provincial leadership for the
Sinsinawa Dominicans in San
Antonio, Texas.
DANTE BERETTA (A) is teaching
biblical Greek at St. Mary's
Seminary and has been teaching
Latin at Garrison Forest School
since 1985.
ELIZABETH JENNY (SF) says:
"Greetings to fellow alumni! I am
getting a lot of enjoyment from
my alumni chapter. My family
and I are doing well in Colorado.
I invite you to see my work at
http:/ /artist.bldr.net."
1981
ROBBYN JACKSON (A) has a
"great new job as chief of
Cultural Resources and Museum
Management at San Francisco
Maritime National Historical
Park (check out the park at
www.nps.govI safr)."
CoLLEGE.
STANLEY SCHIFf (SF) has retired
after 14 years teaching at Sierra
Vista Junior High.
DAVID WEITZEL (A) married
Allison Hornvag in the fall of
~woo, after Dave had finished his
law degree at Catholic University
that spring. They welcomed
William Kenneth's arrival in
October 2002.
1980
{ TH E
{ALUMNI
NoTEs}
DAMON ELLINGSTON (A) is getting
a Ph.D . in physics at the University of Maryland College Park.
MARY (PUTNICK) GARNER (A) is
in her second year at Episcopal
Divinity School and a postulant
for the priesthood. Spouse
GEOFF (A86) is the academic
dean at the Naval Justice School
in Newport, R.I.
CHRISTINE GOWDY-}AEHNIG (A)
and her husband, Mark, recently
moved to Decorah, Iowa, and are
looking forward to living in a
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
college town of over 8,ooo
(six times larger than Preston!).
Their eldest child, Alexandra,
recently left for Hamline University in St. Paul. "It's been a year
of changes for us," she writes.
TRISHAA. HoWELL (SF) is
pleased to announce the
publication of her newest book,
a personal growth/self-help title,
The Journeying Workbook:
Unleash Your Inner Power.
Trisha would love to hear from
former classmates and can be
reached at Trisha@HowellCanyonPress.com.
1989
}ACK EGGLESTON (A) and EMMA
MORTON EGGLESTON (SFgo)
write: "We have moved back to
our home state ofVirginia after
many years of studying and
working elsewhere. I am working
as a hydrologist for the U.S.
Geological Survey in Richmond,
Va. Emma is doing a fellowship in
endocrinology at the University
ofVirginia Medical Center. We
have three children ages 3-9 and
are living in an old farmhouse
near the mountains.
"Hello friends!" writes KYRA
LYNN ESBORG (SF). "I live in
San Francisco and share intuitive
healing practices and stress
management as my business.
My St. John's experience
enhances every day. I am a wave
diver in the ocean waters near my
home, and enjoying life."
LINDA HAMM GREZ (A) is thrilled
to announce the birth of her first
baby, Anna Helene Grez, born
on Sept. 30, 2004-the week
Mt. St. Helens erupted (hence
Anna's middle name).
NINDA LETAW (A) reports that she
is the proud owner of Charlotte's
Home Cooking, a personal chef
service in Raleigh, N.C.
She would love to hear from
classmates.
1990
REV. GERARD THOMAS SPARACO
(A) is living in Little Valley, N.Y.
"It would be nice to hear from
people," he says.
}ONATHANYING (A) is a Ph.D. student in the School oflndustrial
and Labor Relations at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y.
1991
FATHERKEvlNLIXEYL.C. (SF), a
priest of the Congregation of
Legionaries of Christ, is involved
in establishing the new Church
and Sports department within
the Pontifical Council of Lay
people as announced by the
Vatican in August 2004.
From CATHERINE BARRIER (A)
and}IMDUGAN (Ag3): "We'd like
to announce the birth of Lucy
Eleanor Dugan on December 10,
2004, in Los Angeles. We are, of
course, convinced she is the most
beautiful and smartest baby in
the world. We just hope we can
keep up. If anyone is rash enough
to ask for pictures, they can
contact us at ccb@
mnemonides.net! "
BONNIE FORBIS (AGI) recently
graduated as a certified nurse
midwife from the Yale School of
Nursing. She lives in Chicago
with her daughter, Meaghan,
age g.
1995
1993
CHRIS GRAM (A) has just started
in practice as a vascular surgeon
in Decatur, Ill. "We bought a
great house on a lake and our
daughter is two-and-a-half and
doing very well."
"I'm keeping very busy," writes
JANE McMANUs (A). "Not only
will I b e an adjunct professor at
the Columbia Graduate School of
Journalism this semester, but
Steve and I had our second little
girl, Charlotte Mason, on August
28. Big sister Jean just calls her
'New Baby.' I can be reached at
janesports@hotmail.com. Any
Johnnies wanting to know more
about J-school should drop me
a note."
1994
LEAH MuLHOLLAND AucKENTHALER (A) writes, "My husband,
Ben, and I welcomed a son on
June 10. Jonathan Titus Auckenthaler completes our family, '"lith
Nicholas Alan, 2, and Reggie
Pit-Shephard, 8. I always wanted
three boys. We moved from
Brooklyn to Minneapolis three
weeks after I delivered Nicholas.
Ben got a job in financ e here
working for American Express.
Not bad for a jazz drummer.
"Anyone interested in catching
up (Eddie, Matthew, Chad,
Johnnie, Janice , et. al.), please
e-mail me at leaha@
earthlink.net. And any of you
Minn./St. Paul peeps (Paul,
Amie, Muneet), let's have
a thing!"
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
35
NoTES}
" I am living the good life in
sunny Phoenix, Ariz .," writes
ALEX GOLDSTEIN (SF). "I own a
real estate business, and way
more wine and cigars than any
human should possess. Any
Johnnies in the area who want to
drink, smoke, or talk smack, call
me (602-405-9961). Best wishes
to all my friends with whom I've
lost touch ages ago ... "
Greetings from VERONICA
GVENTSADZE (AGI): "After some
four years of teaching the humanities at a university, I am back to
being a student, this time in veterinary medicine. I have no
regrets and am enjoying this new
experience immensely, and while
I have no doubt that I have made
the right choice , my liberal arts
background will always be there
to help me along. So four years
down the road I will be the
'philosopher-vet,' for what that's
worth . I would love to hear from
my classmates and from any of
those who remember me or who,
like me, are in the midst of
switching careers. But most of all
I want to thank Mr. John Verdi for
starting me on this great American adventure some I I years ago,
and I have a question for him
about Nietzsche. It's a long one,
so I won't take up any more space
here. "
}ULIA}. KELLY (A) sends in her
first update since leaving
Annapolis: "After graduation, I
attended the Maine Photo Workshops for six months , contributing to my decision to attend the
Savannah College of Art and
Design in order to get an MFA in
photography. After completing
that program, I worked for three
years with a commercial photographer in Savannah. Convinced I
could make a better living selling
real es tate for my mother's large
firm, I did that for several years
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2 005
}
before meeting my fiance, and
now am planning a wedding in
early 2005, along with a move to
Pensacola, Fla. I hope to get back
into photography when I settle
in, though I may end up shooting
more images on the road than of
weddings, as he is a musician and
travels across the country. I'll
keep you posted! If a band called
the CodeTalkers ever plays in
yow· town, please come out! My
fiance is the banjo player!"
MIKE LAYNE (SF) and family are
still in Barrow, Alaska. "Our
daughter, Audrey Rae, will turn
three in February. And we are
expecting a second child, a boy,
in March. Feel free to e-mail me
at michael.layne@northslope.org."
1996
HEATHER POOL (SF) is a firstyear graduate student at the
University ofWashington in the
political science department.
She's currently a teaching
assistant for Intra to Political
Theory. " I will likely be doing
political theory as my first field,''
she writes.
1997
Major news from }EHANNE
DUBROW(A): "}EREMYSCHAUB
(A) and I are engaged to be
married. The big day is set for the
end ofJuly 2005, in Washington.
Jeremy is currently stationed out
of Norfolk, Va. I'm in my second
year of a Ph.D. program in
creative WJ.'iting at the University
ofNebraska-Lincoln, where
I'm also teaching and working
on the editorial staff of Prairie
Schooner. This past summer, I
spent two months in Oswiecim
(Auschwitz), Poland, where I codesigned and created an exhibit
�.
-,
, -- - - -- ---------------------------- -- - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - -- -- --- - -- -- -- -- -- -- - - -- -- -- - - -- -- - - -
g6
{ALUMNI
THE OTHER. SIDE OF THE WALL
Navy PilotandAuthor Ross Mackenzie, AGio2
BY RosEMARY HARTY
ssigned to teach English at
the Naval Academy five
years ago, Ross Mackenzie
(AGio2) crossed the street
to see what the little college
on the other side of the wall
had to offer. AN avy pilot and 1994 graduate
of the academy, he had been invited back to
teach at his alma mater. "I went to visit a
seminar at St. John's and literally ran into a
good friend of mine from the academy
[Mason New, AGIOI] who I hadn't seen in
years," he says. "He told me, 'man, you're
going to love it.' "
An English major at the academy,
Mackenzie's passion for language and
literature has always had a
rival in his passion for
flying. Mter seeing Top
Gun as a teen-ager, he
went on to earn a private
pilot's license and set his
sights on one day flying
the Navy's fastest jets.
"Take a dark and stormy
night and land a jet on the
back of a ship that's pitching and rolling- that really
appealed to me."
Mackenzie followed his
older brother, Alec, into
the Naval Academy. He
did well enough to secure
a coveted aviation billet,
but had to wait to begin
flight school and spent a
semester as an English
instructor at the academy. When he was
called to flight school, Mackenzie still
expected to fly jets-until a helicopter ride
changed his mind. "I was sold on just that
one flight."
Flying helicopters has its own challenges,
he adds . "You know where it is and what
you have to do to get the aircraft on the
ground before a catastrophic failure,"
he explains.
Mter earning his wings, Mackenzie was
stationed in San Diego and deployed twice
to the Persian Gulf. When he was asked to
come back to teach English at the Naval
Academy, he needed to begin a graduate
degree program, and St. John's was the logical choice. He was a] so eager to fill in gaps
in his education. ''I'm proud of myNaval
Academy degree, but as an English major,
I was frustrated that I didn't end up
reading some of the things I thought
were important."
The texts Mackenzie read at St. John's
quickly found their way onto his syllabus at
the academy; midshipmen in his first-year
English class were assigned the Odyssey
and the Canterbury Tales. "I probably had
only a handful of English majors in my
classes, but I was determined to get those
guys excited about the literature," he says.
At St. John's, Mackenzie was invigorated
by the lively discussions in his classes. "The
thing about the Graduate Insthute that J
Ross MACKENZIE'S LOVE FOR BOOKS COMPETES
WITH A LOVE FOR F LYING.
find so remarkable is that it brings people
from such vastly different backgrounds to
share the same great works. Everyone
brings their own life experiences with them
to the table."
Mackenzie was enrolled in the literature
segment and discussing the Iliad when the
terrorist attacks took place on September
n; he was one of two students with military
experience in his seminar. "You can read in
these great books when and why it's appropriate to put people in harm's way. I've
been there and I was able to say 'this is what
I believe in.' "
{ THE
CoLL E GE.
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
St. John's College . Winter 200.5}
Now stationed in Jacksonville, Fla.,
where he is a full-time pilot in a reserve
squadron, Mackenzie flies Seahawk
helicopters, often on counter-drug missions off the Florida coast. He's married to
his high-school sweetheart, Elizabeth, and
they have two boys: Stuart, 3, and
Cameron, I.
Last year, he put his liberal arts and
Navy backgrounds together to take over a
project his father, Ross Mackenzie,
launched shortly after Mackenzie's brother ·
graduated from the academy. "My father's
a newspaper writer who was frustrated by
having two sons in the Naval Academy and
listening to them talk-he always wanted
to know what was going
on-and he decided he
could tell other parents
about it."
BriefPoints (Naval
Institute Press, 2004) was
originally published in
1993 and revised n Igg6.
Much information in the
book was dated, and g/n
had brought changes to
the academy. A major
revision was needed, and
the publisher gave
Mackenzie the job. "I did
interviews with everyone
from midshipmen to academic deans to athletic
department personnel to
find out what really makes
the Naval Academy tick."
Mackenzie observes that family
members of middies are proud and excited
about their children entering the Naval
Academy, but they can be perplexed by the
military culture. A glossm·y of terms that
quickly become part of every plebe's
vocabulary-Mackenzie calls it "Midspeak"-is an important part of the book.
Parents aren't always aware of what their
midshipmen endure in terms of academic
and physical challenges. In his introduction, Mackenzie tells parents that the
academy-like St. John's-isn't for every
student. "As important as their advice is,
their support and understanding are even
more important," he says.~
of art and poetry, 'The Lost
Shabbos: the Jews ofOswiecim.'
Two ofmypoemswere recently
published in The Hudson
Review. And, staying true to
my St. John's roots, I'm still
translating poetry, at the
moment, sections from the
19th-century Polish epic, Pan
Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz,
which is nothing if not obscure."
1998
CINDY LUTZ (A) and VINCENT
BAKER (Ags) were married on
October 10, 2004, in Frederick,
Md., nearly IO years after they
first met by the mailboxes in the
Coffee Shop. Johnnies in attendance included PAMELA BERGSON
(Agg), JosH EMMONS (Agg)and
the also newly-married MARISA
Jo and BILL ERSKINE (A97).
"We'd love to hear from any
friends in the D.C. Metro Area:
cinderlou@peoplepc.com."
1999
MELISSA "MISSY" PHIFER (SF)
writes: "After completing my
service in the Peace Corps in
Haiti in 2002, I worked in
various odd jobs until I began
graduate school at Temple
University in Philadelphia.
Currently I am working at John
Bartram High School teaching
biology and working on my
Master's ofEducation to be
completed soon! I would love to
hear from any of my former
classmates- send me an e-mail at
mphifeno@aol.com and let me
know what you're up to. I hope
all ofyou are well!"
2000
KARINA I-lEAN (A) will receive
her master of fine arts in drawing
from New Mexico State University
in Las Cruces, N.M. , this May. For
the time being, she's keeping busy
with exhibitions and teaching.
"Will be relocating to southern
Colorado soon-I'll be hiding in
the mountains, making artwork,
and protesting the Bush dynasty if
anyone would like to join meyou're always welcome: karinahean@hotmail.com."
"It was a long road similar to the
one described at the beginning of
the Inferno, but after nine years I
have reached the end of a long
road," writes CHRISTOPHER
VAUGHAN (A). "A journcy that
took me from the University of
Alaska and the wilds of the great
Northwest to the warmth of
Florida at Flagler College is now
history. I have graduated from
college at last!"
NoTEs}
37
certification training. She was
recently in London and Hawaii,
and is heading to France and
Mexico shortly! She would love
to hear from recent graduates
and alumni in the New York area.
Mter traveling to the far reaches
of Thailand and New Zealand
together, ANDREW RANSON and
MARTHA ROGERS (both AGI)
were married June 26, 2004, in
Annapolis . Martha is continuing
her studies in holistic healing
while Andrew is teaching high
school social studies and English
in Baltimore County. They have
found marriage to be greater
than they ever expected and are
looking forward to their next trip
abroad as husband and wife.
2002
JAMES GILMORE (A) is studying
phifosophy at Johns Hopkins
University. "My e-mail is jamesfgilmore@gmail.com, and it
would be great to hear from any
Johnnies, especially members of
the class of 2.002.."
CHARLES GREEN (AGI) writes:
"After completing my coursework as an English literature
Ph.D. candidate at Drew
University, fhave moved back to
Annapolis to prepare for my
comprehensive exams. I look
forward to getting to know the
city and the college again, as well
as seeing alumni old and new."
"As of August 2004, I am living
in San Jose, Calif. , passing on the
love ofliberal arts by teaching
general curriculum to eager
fifth-graders," writes MEGAN
MAxwELL-SMiTH (A). "My experience is, so far, quite rewarding.
I am at a very well-run school
peopled by bright students and
dedicated staff. I would love to
hear from anyone inclined to get
in touch: megan.maxwellsmith@sbc.global.net."
}USTINNAYLOR (A) and DILLON
WRIGHT-FITZGERALD (Aos) were
married on June :12, 2004, in
2001
}OSHUA VAN DONGE (SF) is still
"slogging away" at the University ofWashington's graduate
program in architecture.
"I've spent this year in
St. Michael's, Md., serving an
apprenticeship in wooden boat
building," ANNE NEEDHAM (A)
wrote last summer. "I'm now off
to Naguabo, Puerto Rico, for a
few months to do some house
repair and child care for my
brother and his family. After
that, if you know anyone who has
a wooden boat that needs work
(i.e., anyone who has a wooden
boat), please let me know."
SYLVAINE RAMECKERS (A) is still
working for Dateline NBC and
currently completing diver
{T
H E
Co
L L E GE .
A STRONG FouNDATION
orne things just seem meant to be, as AURORA
CASSELLS (Ao4) writes: "My sister, boyfriend, and
I, all of the most recently graduated class from
Annapolis, are moving into a cute little house in the
beautiful town of Shepherdstown, W.V., which my
sister, PROSE, is buying. This itself is exciting news,
since buying a house is considered a big step in establishing
oneself, but the real reason for writing in about it is of course
much more personal and familiar and Johnnie-based.
"Mter our offer on the house had already been accepted and
Prose was touring the outside of the house another time, she
found a remarkable, unbelievable sign that this was the right
house: It seems that someone had taken a finger to the concrete
foundation for the newer part of the house at the back while it
was still wet and written in 4-inch-high letters, underlined:
The Program. So, three recent graduates are all moving into a
house built on the foundation of the Program!
"We also discovered that it was obviously meant for Johnnies
from the Annapolis campus, since on the newly built back deck
there was an old lawn croquet stake! Already in love with the
little house and its great location, it was truly welcoming to find
such friendly reminders of St. John's. " ~
St. John 's College . W in ter 2005
}
�{ALUMNI
JoHNNIE
VOICES}
B. ATHENS
Athletic~ Aeschyl~
ABOUT THE CATS
and Spzderman
BY STEPHEN CoNN (SFg8)
first came to Athens I I years ago,
a post-high school gift from and
with my parents. Mom wanted
to give me an introduction to
classical culture before I headed to
St.John's. Several years and jobs
later, armed with only my Spiderman 2
backpack and a whole lot of can-d?, I
returned to Athens for the Olymp1cs.
I checked in at my hostel, the Hotel
Zorba on Victoria Square. Yannis the bellboy was pleasant enough, the bunk area
only had one unidentifiable odor, and the
toilets flushed as long as you didn't put
toilet paper in them. I learned .to j?urney
on the Piraeus-Kifissia metro hne m order
to get to the different stadiums. Fierybrowed Greek men pondered my Spidey
backpack, while old ladies crossed themselves every time we passed a church.
Many events took place at the aptly
named Olympic Stadium to the north,
where people walked under va~t white
archways while Greeks sat on lifeguard
chairs and announced on bullhorns,
"Parakalo [please] we are welcoming you
to the Olympic Games. Water polo is on
the right."
gymnasts happened to take an extra step
when I shoot-coincidence!
The Acropolis! Don't think I passed up
the ancient stuff, folks. The next day I
began the hike to that fount of democracy,
The Temple ofNike . To the east of~he
main structure, slightly down the ndge,
are the remains of the Theater of
Dionysus, where Sophocles and Aeschylus
received their first performances.
In honor of the occasion, I pulled out
my copy of Lattimore's Aeschylus, and
recited a bit of The Persians. A few cats
living among the pillars gathere.d in .
audience, and I felt the Apolloman veil
had been suitably rent.
And the women! Many a time I would
approach a sellers' booth and say, "excuse
me, would you have a ticketfor. .. good
God!, I considered asking one of these
Hellenic beauties for a night on the town,
but reflecting on the Medea-like anger of
most of my past dates, I opted for another
evening of Amstel Lights at t~e Zorba.
After sessions of table tenms and boxing between various breakaway republics,
it was time to head home. I brought an
American flag with me on the flight. Not a
huge hit in Athens, but the bu~z - ct~t
customs officer in Atlanta notlced lt as
he stamped my passport.
"You bring that to the Games?' he
smiled.
"Yessir."
"You must have waved that quite a bit,"
he said with a grin .
"Well, if we can put a chimp in the
White House then we should certainly be
able to wave CHd Glory once and a while."
Okay, I didn't exactly say this. ~ut ifye
Johnnies old and new want to get m t~uch
with the Mediterranean source, then JUSt
put those terrorist fears away ~nd tell
the ticket agent, "I want two t1ckets to
paradise."-'$-
But it was gymnastics I was after, my
old sport, many beers ago. I sat down
among sad-eyed Eastern-block:r~ to
watch one of the women's prehmmary
sessions. "GO KA-TY!" cried an
anguished Englishman into my left
eardrum. The Chinese girls tended to fall
off the beam and stumble a lot. "No flash
photos, sir," the usher chided me. So the
(SF or) writes, "For the most
part, my life is quiet and full of cats. If they keep
multiplying I might make crazy cat woman status
at the early age of 35· I live with ANDRE\V SMITH
and ISLA PINELO (both SFo3) . CAROLINE KN~P
(SF or) recently moved from our house to a qu~et
neighborhood and lives in a beautiful garden. I'm su~·e she m.lsses
h . g her bedroom windows rattle when the cars dnve bywlth
t : : ;bass all the way up . If anyone is in or passing through the
Berkeley area, give me a holler." -$-EBEKKA SHUGARS
Millvi1le, Penn. The Naylors now
live in Wilmington, Del., where
Justin teaches at Nativity
Preparatory School.
2003
Thorn Barry and MEG EISENHAUER (A) were married at
St. John's College in Annapolis
on July 31 , 20o4. " Many thanks
to everyone at the Annapolis
campus who helped us to make
this possible ," Meg writes.
(A) is moving to
Italy to study gastronomy at the
new Universita di Scienze Gastronomiche (www.unisg.it/eng).
He received a full scholarship.
"Drop me a line at aaron .foster
@gmail.com. I will be in
Pollenzo, a small town outside of
Bra, in Cuneo, Piedmont."
AARON FOSTER
biology.utah.edu or
bugle song@ juno. com."
RACHEL (ROCCIA) SULLIVAN (A)
Wl·ites with an update on what she
and husband MICHAEL SULLIVAi~
(Ao2) have been up to since
graduation. "As many already
know, we were married a week
after graduating from St. John's.
We then moved to Washington,
D.C., so that I could take pre-med
classes at the University of Maryland, and so that Michael could
pursue his Ph.D. in Philosophy
(particularly in medieval scholastics, which should come as no
surprise!) at Catholic University.
He is now in his third year. In May
of this year I gave birth to a
daughter, Clare Veritas Sullivan,
who is now a fat and happy little
five-month-old. We bought a
house in Silver Spring, Md., and
I've begun studying medicine
at the Uniformed Services University, which is located right
.
'
across the street from NIH in
Bethesda. I'm a commissioned
ofii.cer in the U.S. Army and learning to be an "Army Doc." I go to
school with several ex-midshipmen from the Naval Academy who
think it's bizarre that a Johnnie
would choose to join the military,
but the idea of practicing "Good
Medicine In Bad Places," as our
motto goes, is really exciting and
led me to choose this school over a
few more prestigious ones that
offered me slots. I found that
medical schools were surprisingly
receptive to me as a St. John's
student, and would love to talk to
and encourage anyone interested
in applying: I can be reached at
rmrsullivan@hotmail.com. I'm
also happy to report that
Michael's brother RANDALL (Ao4)
has joined the Dominican order
of priests, and has started his
novitiate . He's enjoying himself
immensely and has taken the new
name of Ezra. In closing I'd like to
say hello to all my old pals, to offer
my spare room to anyone who has
a reason to be in D.C., and to take
this opportunity to encourage
BEN FREY (A02,) and GABRIELA
HURWITZ (Ao2) to call me back!"
CoLLE G E .
St. fohn's College . Winter 2005
}
2004
LAURAA:NNEMANGUM (A)
married Michael Moore on
June 5, 2004·.
PAUL McLAIN (SFGI) was
awarded a scholarship to attend
Yale University Divinity School in
New Haven, Conn. He completed
an intensive Koine Greek class
this summer and is settling into
his first of three years' work
toward a Master of Divinity
degree. Ruthie, his wife , is office
manager ofHistoRX, a medical
research firm affiliated with Yale.
She now serves her patented
Thursday Night GI Gathering
Homemade Goodies to "Divvies"
instead ofJohnnies. They have
been blessed with a rent-free
four-bedroom parsonage provided
by St. Andrew's United Methodist
Church, where they work part
time. Johnnies are welcome to
stay when making New England
pilgrimages. Contact
pkmclain@comcast.net if
you are headed their way or if
you would just like to keep
in touch. -$-
NATASHA VERl\iAAK (A)
writes: "I just survived my first
quarter of graduate school in
the materials science and
engineering department at
the University of California,
Santa Barbara ...woah!
Visitors welcome."
ERIN HANLON (SF) Wl·ites: "I
entered the University of Utah
this fall as a Ph.D. student in the
biology department. I am
studying plant ecology with an
emphasis on the impacts of the
drought and climate change. I
would be interested in hearing
from any Johnnies in the Salt Lake
area, whether they live here or are
just passing through. I can be
reached al either hanlon@
WHAT's UP?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call ns, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you're doing. The next issue
will be published in May;
deadline for the alumni notes
section is March IS.
IN ANNAPOLIS:
Tlz e College Magazine
St. John's College, P.O. Box 28oo
Annapolis, MD 2I404;
rosemary.harty@sjca. edu
IN SANTA FE:
The College Magazine
St. John's College
Communications Office
n6o Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
STEPHEN CONN WAVED THE FLAG AND
RECITED THE PERSIA NS IN GREECE.
{ TH E
39
{OBITUARIES}
CLARE SULLIVAN IS GOING PLACES.
{ THE
CoLLEG E .
St. John 's College. Winter 20 0 5}
�4I
{OBITUARIES}
{OBITUARIES}
REMEMBERING
MISS LEONARD
At a memorial service in October, former
St. John's tutor and Assistant Dean
Barbara Leonard (HAss) was remembered
as a star athlete with a zeal for competition, a scientist with an inquisitive mind,
and an able administrator with a skill for
strongly-worded memos. Mostly, she was
remembered as a good friend.
Miss Leonard died last August in
Oberlin, Ohio. Her health had been
failing for several years. She
had retired from the college
in rg87 after serving as
assistant dean and tutor for
36 years, but continued to
serve the college as a
member of its Board of
Visitors and Governors for
several more years.
In the midst of Homecoming festivities, alumni,
tutors, and former colleagues of Miss Leonard's
gathered in Francis Scott
Key Auditorium to share
their memories of a strongwilled woman with a great
sense ofhumor. And
although she was dean of
women for just one year
before her title became
assistant dean, Miss
Leonard remained a role
model, confidante, and
friend to generations of
women at the college.
Among them was Anita
Kronsberg (A7g), who read
from an account of Miss
Leonard's life.
Born and reared in Oberlin in what
she described as something of an "idyllic
childhood," Miss Leonard earned a
bachelor's degree at Oberlin College
and master's and doctoral degrees in
zoology at the University of Rochester.
She conducted research in histology at
Yale Medical School before becoming a
visiting lecturer at Oberlin. Before
coming to St.John's, she taught zoology
at Smith College. Her willingness to work
with men and to compete in a maledominated field had roots in her love for
"She came with us_,
J'he read the bookJ' with
us_, and J'he learned
at our rate. "
from my colleagues, male students
resented my presence when I arrived on
campus," she later recalled. "In fact,
prior to my appointment, it was a mass
protest of the then all-male student body
against the admission of women students
that convinced the college leadership they
needed to hire a female tutor and assistant
dean. These students would constantly
try to catch me off guard,
so I pretended nothing
fazed me."
The following year, when
the assistant dean for men
took a sabbatical, Miss
Leonard worked with both
male and female students.
From that point on, she
said, "I never weaned those
boys from me."
In the early rg6os, Miss
Leonard was a Fulbright
lecturer in India. She was
named an honorary faculty
member of Lady Doak
College and The American
College, both in Madurai,
India. When she retired in
rg87, the students dedicated
the yearbook to her:
"Though gruff in manner,
she has an eye for the
humorous and is quick
with a quip, delighting in
repartee," theywrote.
"She is also judicious in her
advice and careful to keep a
confidence . In her position
she has heard many."
Tutor emeritus Ben Milner (HAg7) recalled that after their first
meeting,
he thought Miss Leonard to be a "retiring
motherly sort. That was a Jirst impression
-and one I would discover in need of
correction," he said.
When Mr. Miln er began his new post,
Edward Sparrow (HAg3), dean at the
time, advised Mr. Milner about the
"importance of cooperating with Barbara
Leonard." "And to reinforce the point
smilingly, he asked if I was familiar with
her habit of firing off sharply critical
BARBARA BRUNNER KiEBLER (ASS)
Mrss LEONARD PREFERRED THE CoFFEE SHOP
To HER McDowELL HALL OFFICE.
sports: As a third-grader she was the
catcher on a boys' softball team.
Through colleagues in Oberlin,
President Richard Weigle (HJ4g) found
Miss Leonard and brought her to
St. John's to shepherd the first 25 women
to attend the college. Miss Leonard had to
win over the male students.
"Although I encountered no resistance
{ 'I'
HE
CoLLEGE .
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005
}
memoranda and letters to
various colleagues including
the dean and president of the
college," Mr. Milner added.
In her time at the college,
Miss Leonard became "the
first among equals," and "her
voice was always respected
and often decisive," he said.
"I think that it was universally acknowledged that she
had a love affair with the
students," Mr. Milner said.
"It was mutual and it was fun.
Barbara enjoyed nothing
more than a good joke, a
hardy laugh, and she had a
lot of company in this with
students and staff as well. "
Tutor emeritus Malcolm
Wyatt (HAo3) shared
McDowell 13 with Miss
Leonard in the mid-rg8os.
"She was very fond of the
students," Mr. Wyatt said.
"She maintained close
friendships with successive
generations characterized by sympathy,
warmth, acrostic humor. And the source
of that acrostic humor had a certain skepticism about it that sharpened her judgment but didn't keep her from being
attached to the student body and hence,
[she had] a very accurate perception of
what life was like at the college from day
to day."
A member of the first class of women
to graduate, Barbara Brunner Kiebler
(class of 1955), said Miss Leonard was a
genuine member of that class even before
the Alumni Association made her an
honorary alumna. "She came with us,
she read the books with us, and she
learned at our rate," Mrs. Kiebler said.
With all the new rules the college
adopted to keep men and women
separate-and with the inevitable bending
and breaking of those rules-Miss Leonard
was "good-natured and flexible" even as
the president and dean fretted over such
matters. "She was sanguine about the
relationship of the sexes-after all she was
BARBARA LEONARD BECAME AN HONORARY
MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF
I955
UPON HER
RETIREMENT, BUT LONG BEFORE, THE FIRST
CLASS OF WOMEN CONSIDERED HER ONE OF
THEIR OWN.
a biologist by training, she knew the
inevitability of the relationship," she said.
Miss Leonard could usually be found in
the Coffee Shop , but she spent a great
deal of time on the playing fields as well,
Mrs. Kiebler noted. "Barbara broke the
sports barrier for women at the college.
There were no sports here for women
except badminton and Ping-Pong.
Barbara h erself integrated the softball
team ... she was a whale of a softball
pitcher and she won her St. John's blazer
for softball. Whenever I came back to the
college at Homecoming, I would see her
in the blue blazer and a pleated skirt, her
school uniform. She wore it proudly."
When Mrs. Kiebler brought her
daughter, Amy Oosterhout (A82) to the
{ T HE
CoLLEGE.
college, she was pleased to leave
her in the capable hands of
Barbara Leonard. "Barbara told
me how pleased she was to
have at St. John's the children
of her girls. I never heard her
call us that before, but I guess
that's what we were. She
promised us she'd look after
Amy, and she did."
Two members of the Annapolis
class ofrg8o, Didrik Schanche
and Ann Schanche Ferro came to
the college as Febbies, leaving
their parents in Cairo, Egypt, for
a college halfway around the
world. In Miss Leonard, the
sisters found " landfall and a very
solid one in a sea of words and
great books." Like many
students, they forged a life long
friendship with Miss Leonard.
"Ann and I, being homeless,
were often around campus or at
least Annapolis during the
holiday because Egypt was a little
too far for a three-day weekend,"
Miss Schanche said. '"Miss Leonard would
periodically invite us up to her apartment
over the infirmary for a glass of wine and
some conversation and just to help us feel
that we did have a bit of home away from
home." Ms. Leonard also was a stickler
for certain thing, Ms. Schanche noted.
One in particular was the correct pronunciation of the word' dissect.'
"Most people, me included, pronounced
it 'dye-sect,'" she said. "The correct
pronunciation according to Ms. Leonard is
' dis-sect' and she drilled that one in. I am
now an editor and every time I try to
correct someone's pronunciation of that,
I think of Ms. Leonard."
"She was there for us," Mrs. Ferro
added. "And so in death she stays with us,
too. She is locked in our psyches, in her
flat-soled sneakers, her blue skirtconsistent, calm, humorous, solid, and
generous to a fault with her support and
guidance for us students. These are lifelong gifts that Barb am gave us and that
she expects us to share with others."*'
St. fohn's College. Winter 2005}
�{OBITUARIES}
BEATE
RuHM voN
{OBITUARIES}
0PPEN
Beate Ruhm von Oppen (HAor), St. John's
tutor emerita, died in August at her
home in Annapolis.
Miss von Oppen left Germany as a teenager to complete her secondary education
in Holland, moved to England and earned
a bachelor's degree at the University of
Birmingham. She worked in political
intelligence for the British Foreign Office.
Mter the war, she took a job with the
American Historical Association in
Alexandria, Va., when she learned from a
co-worker about an opening at St. John's.
She taught at the college for nearly
43 years, with an occasional break to write
books, conduct research, and serve as a
visiting professor at other colleges.
Her interest in the role of religion in
the German resistance led her to work
before starting college in England:
Letters to Freya, a collection ofletters
written by Helmuth James von Moltke,
a legal adviser to the Third Reich, to his
wife, Freya. Von Moltke worked within
the regime to undermine the Nazis
before he was captured and executed.
In 1989, the German edition of the book
won the Scholl Prize, a prestigious literary
award in Germany.
At a memorial service last
September, Miss von Oppen
was remembered as a careful
and diligent scholar, a lover of
music (particularly Bach) and
books, and a beloved sister,
sister-in-law, and aunt.
Several who spoke at the
service referred to an essay
called "The Tuning Fork,"
Miss von Oppen's account of
the bewildering change in the
Germany of her youth.
The following is excerpted
from the essay, originally
publishedinHumanitas, the
journal of the George Bell
Institute. Miss von Oppen
wrote of her attempt to go to
Holland, where she hoped to
work before starting college
in England.
crisis at the very tim e when the Hitler
regime created large numbers of refugees
or would-be refugees- trying to keep such
aliens out.
To admit my status as a worker, albeit
unpaid, would have meant being sent back
to the fatherland, with the additional
black mark of having tried to flee it. So I
denied it. The denial was an automatic
reflex. Unfortunately, my response to the
question about my religion was equally
automatic. I said 'Protestant,' having been
baptized at birth according to the
Zwinglian rite and having attended Prates- ·
tant religious instruction at my German
schools, with even a spell of Lutheran
Sunday school thrown in for good measure. It was a mistake. I did have the presence of mind and necessary minutes and
pennies to send a cheery postcard about
my 'good trip' to my Jewish grandmother
in Frankfurt from the Dutch side. I wanted
to reassure her; she had a heart ailment, of
which she died before the year was out.
Now I was put on the next train to
Emmerich, where I was received-not
to say taken into custody- by the Evangelische Balznlzoftmission ... .It felt like a
halfway house on the way to more
serious, more purely political
confinement. Theywere stern
and forbidding and there was
nothing evangelical about them.
There was even a touch of
Nazism. As I was sitting, somewhat disconsolately, in a dark
reception room, a boy of about
eight came in and sang one of
those Nazi songs-1 don't know
why; perhaps it was just youthful
exuberance. It grated enough to
make me decide to accept no
food from this establishment or
run the risk of having to sit at the
table with these professional
Protestants. My grandmother
had given me enough provender
for the day.
What I did not have was
money, beyond the ten Marks
one was allowed to take out of the
country. When the woman in
"THE TUNING FORK"
It was spring 1936. They took me off the
train after it had crossed the border from
Germany. They asked me for my religionfor while they wanted to protect the Dutch
unemployed from the competition offoreigners, they also wanted to protect the
virtue of young women. I was 17. They
accused me of coming to work in Holland.
I denied it, though they were right. They
had no proof, but I had the burden of
proof. The fact was that I had in the prcvious December passed the examination
given by Oxford for entrance to British
universities. Being penniless and not
wanting to be a burden on the American
uncle who had paid my school fees for the
year that it had taken me to prepare for
that exam, I had gladly accepted the
school's invitation to stay on as unpaid
general dog's body until it was time to go
to England to study, the following October. So I was earning my keep as matron's
assistant, occasional coach or tutor, babysitter, and so on. But these services .. .were
work prohibited by the law or regulations
of the land that was , like most European
countries-struggling with an economic
ALTHOUGH SHE WORKED IN
BRITISH INTELLIGENCE DURING
WoRLD WAR
II, Miss voN 0PPEN
RESISTED BEING CALLED A SPY.
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. John 's College. Winter 2005
}
charge of this Internal Mission house
allowed me to go for a short walk in town,
I could not resist a tuning fork in the
window of a small music shop. I went in
and bought it. My instrument at the time
was the violin, which I played as badly as I
had played the piano and would later play
the oboe. I may have justified the rash
purchase to myself as useful: a violin has
to be tuned and there isn't always a piano
or other instrument present to give the
pitch. It was a modest tuning fork and
cheap, but it depleted my minimal
resources. I probably realized this, yet
probably felt, too, that there was not only
practical but also symbolic value in a
gadget that gave you the true pitch.
Before I went for the walk in the strange
town I had telephoned my school and told
my friends there what had befallen me .
They said they would certify me as a bona
fide pupil- I was taking lessons with the
music master-and get the local police
to put an official endorsement on the
43
'-/1s I was sittin~ somewhat disconsolately;
in a dark reception room~
a boy ofabout eight
came in and sang one
ofthose Nazi songs... "
This meant crossing the Rhine. I boarded
the ferry, paid my last Pfennige to the nice
conductor, and asked him how far from
the landing place on the other side the
railway was. It was a fal.r step, especially
with luggage. He found me a free ride to
the station. This turned out to be a local
butcher, who gave me the seat beside him
in the van, with the carcasses behind us.
He wasn't an anti-Nazi. He sounded like a
Nazi or at least a loyal citizen to the Third
Reich. In the absence of money I gave him
my last German postage stamps and
signed a document acknowledging my
debt to him for the additional small
amount it cost to connect my old rail
ticket with the new stretch from Cleve to
Nijmegen.
So offl went, crossed the frontier without further incident, and reached the
school safely. The tuning fork came in
handy when we played Haydn quartets.
I still have it. Tuning forks don't take up
much space._.
BEATE RuHM VON 0PPEN, THE T UNING FORK
document that would suitably impress the
Dutch border officials. The document duly
arrived by Express mail the next day, but
also a message that the police station had
closed by the time that my friends had got
there and that they had made their statement sound as persuasive as possible without the police back-up. They advised me
not to try the same border crossing again,
from Emmerich to Zevenaar, where I was
now known, but to take another, from
Cleve to Nijmegen, where I wasn't.
JOliN AINSWORTH
economy called Socialism in the Soviet
Union. He is survived by a daughter, Jenny.
JONATHAN AURTHUR
John Edgar Ainsworth, class of1942,
died Sept. 30 following complications
from a stroke. He was a resident of Silver
Spring, Md. Until his retirement in 1984,
Mr. Ainsworth was an atmospheric
physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, where he was primary designer of
the Pioneer Venus probe.
Mr. Ainsworth pursued many hobbies
including ice skating, sailing, skiing,
camping, windsurfing, hang-gliding, flying
small aircraft, ballroom dancing, and jazz.
He became one of the first students in the
college's New Program when he enrolled at
St. John's in 1938, but he left the college
shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor to
enlist in the Army-Air Force. As the Washington Post reported, Mr. Ainsworth was
sent to the Pacific, and "took with him two
books, both on calculus, and taught himself the discipline while in the military."
Mter returning from the service in 1946,
he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Harvard University.
He is survived by his wife, Anne, and
three children.
Jonathan Aurthur (A68), who wrote a book
about his son Charley's struggles with
mental illness in The Angel and the
Dragon, took his own life in November.
He was 56 and had lived in Santa Monica,
Calif. An account published in the Los
Angeles Times said Mr. Aurthur leaped to
his death from a soo-foot cliff in the Angeles National Forest in Arcadia, Calif. His
body was found Nov. 29. According to the
article, friends said that he was despondent
over several issues.
Mr. Aurthur was profiled in the Winter
2003 issue of The College. The article
described his attempts to understand his
son's illness and to determine if someone
could have found a better way to help
Charley, who committed suicide by
jumping from a freeway overpass.
Mter leaving St. John's, Mr. Aurthur
attended the University of California,
Los Angeles, where he majored in motion
pictures. In the late 1g6os through the
early 198os, he worked as a community
organizer and documentary filmmaker.
He was also the editor of a journal of
political theory called Appeal to Reason
and the author of a book on political
{ THE
CoLLEGE .
St. .John's College . Winter 2005
ALSO NOTED:
STEPHEN BRAUN (SF84), July 2004
}OliN-DAVID HINDLE HAIIDT (AGI96), Sept. 9,
2004
CHARLES HYSON (class ofr937), March 8,
2004
PERCY KEITH Ill (class ofi949), Jan. 17,
2004
JoHN LOGUE (class of1950), June r, 2004
}oHNMAGIDRE (class ofr946), March 13,
2003
ALAN PIKE (class of1937), Oct. 22, 2004
MR. WILLIAMT. ROBERTS III (class of1951)
ANDREW CAMERON SHERRARD }R. (class of
1941), Nov. 7, 2003
A. ROBERT SMITH (class of1937), June 2,
2004
ROBEitl' SNIBBE (class ofr937), June 8, 2004
}OliN STERRETT (class ofr950), Aug. 14,
2004
RICHARD B. TAYLOR, class of1936
THOMASUSILTON (class of1943), Oct. 15,
2004
VALYS ZILIUS (class of1958), Nov. 14, 2004
}
�~------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------,
44
ALFRED MOLLIN
Alfred M ollin, who died last August in
Philadelphia, was a tutor for seven years in
Annapolis. He later lift the college and
embarked on a career at the Department
ofJustice, where he rose to the position of
senior appellate counsel. Some alumni may
remember him.from his days at the college,
but many more know ofhim.from the Greek
manual used at St. John :S. Tutor emeritus
Robert Williamson (HAo2), who
co-authored the manual, offered this
remembrance at Mr. M ollin 's memorial
service at the college last September:
I first met Alfred Mollin when he visited this
campus in order to sit in on classes and he
interviewed for a position on the faculty.
Fellow graduate students of his at Penn
State whom I had known as students at
St. John's suggested that he stay over at
Marilyn's and my home .. .On the night
before he returned to Penn State, he and I
talked long into the night about St. John's
College, about our common friends, about
philosophy and the writings of philosophers, about politics and military history.
By the time we arrived at the subject of our
favorite movies, it was clear-I think to both
of us-that our conversation, if allowed to
continue into the coming academic year,
would develop into a friendship.
Since I first read his Ethics, Aristotle's
account of friendship has seemed to me the
truest and most helpful guide to understanding what can generally be understood
of an afiection so intimately bound up with
the particularities of those who share in it.
It is an abiding disposition or readiness to
take pleasure in another's company and to
wish for and work for that other's good. And
it is reciprocal. But, as always with Aristotle,
that readiness comes fully into being when
it is set to work. The highest manifestation
of friendship is shared activity which, in
itself or in its goals, is good. Activity, unlike
readiness, depends upon opportunity, has
its starts and stops. There are high moments
in friendship. And aside from the activity of
raising children which husband and wife
share, I have never enjoyed a more intense
and sustained experience of friendship than
in the two years Alfred and I collaborated in
the production ofAnlntroduction to
Ancient Greek.
The idea was first his. We had both come
to agree that the textbooks available at the
time did little to encourage serious
reflection on the forms and artful use of
language. I had been content to supple-
{OBITUARIES}
{ArJUMNI AssociATION NEws}
ment and occasionally correct the
treatment given by Chase and Phillips'
textbook, then in use. It was Alfred who,
after giving two informal lectures on
Greek and English grammar, proposed
that together we produce a textbook with
the aim of serving the principal aims of
the St. John's language tutorial. At first I
was skeptical. I'm glad he overcame my
doubts .
We decided that each of the major
themes which would be recurrently
addressed and developed in the course of
the textbook should be passed back and
forth between us. We knew that in what we
speaking. The striking triangular diagram
which he placed at the end of the introductory chapter on the verb is the visible
image of his unifying insight. In the years
since, I have marveled at this unifying
power in his thinking on the most various
of subjects, a unification which respects
and illuminates the differences of its units
by revealing their togetherness.
There was a third sharer in that activity:
Chris Dill, later Chris Mullin, who was at
that time secretary to the dean and then
registrar at the college. In addition to
those responsibilities, she undertook the
final stages of preparation of the text for
distribution to the freshman classes. This
required the exercise of taste and judgment .
as well as the transcription of Greek. Our
goal was to distribute each lesson at least a
week before it would be used by the freshman classes. She saw to it that we did,
not only by doing her part but often by
making up for time lost in our last-minute
submissions ofrough drafts to her ...
If I tried to describe Alfred throughout
the time I knew him, the word with which
I would begin and end is one with which
Homer often describes his heroes: megathymos. In English: "great-hearted," though
in Homer's use the meaning can range
from "generous" (or "big-hearted" ) to
"high-spirited."
I have already mentioned one instance of
Alfred's gcneTOsity. I wish to mention
another, lest it be forgotten sooner than it
should. Early in the fall semester which was
to prove his last, John Kieffer (HA7o) fell
ill and Alfred was asked temporarily to
substitute for him in his feshman language
tutorial. At that time a substitute was asked
to serve on a pro bono b asis for a couple of
weeks and then would begin receiving a
stipend in addition to his regular compensation. After a longer period ... the class
would cease to be assigned to the incapacitated tutor and be reassigned to some other
tutor, with proportional compensation.
Alfred knew how strongly John Kieffer
hoped to be able to return to his class, a
hope which, as Alfred knew, would probably never be realized. When the treasurer,
Chuck Elzey, objected that under the
Polity the college could no longer pay for a
substitute, Alfred responded, "I insist on
continuing as a substitute, and I refuse to
be paid." Alfred continued as a substitute
during John Kieffer's remaining months
and never told John what he had done for
him ...
"What we learned in the
e:x:ecution was that
same-mindedness can
be generative: as we
passed a theme back
andforth~ each ones
anticipated contribution
was deepened and
enlarged by the others
prevzous one. "
RoBERT WILLIAMsoN (HAo2)
were setting out to do there was what
Aristotle calls homonoia, same-mindedness, on all that really mattered. What we
learned in the execution was that samemindedness can be generative: as we
passed a theme back and forth, each one's
anticipated contribution was deepened and
enlarged by the other's previous one. It was
truly a combined effort.
But sequential combined efforts must
have beginnings. Early on we had agreed
that we would unfailingly present the textbook as an equal effort. He held me to the
agreement on several occasions. That was
an act of generosity on his part. Now that
he is gone, I feel free to speak the truth.
'I'he two most important and original
insights .which gave rise to our project
and which most pervasively shaped it
were his. I mean the distinction between
formal and material verb-complements
and, especially, the unification of the six
aspects of the Greek verb under the three
elements of subject, predicate, and act of
{ THE CoLLEG E . St. fohn 's College. Winte r 2005
+
}
FRoM THE ALuMNI
AssOCIATION
PRESIDENT
Dear Johnnies,
As alumni, we are always happy towelcome new members into our community.
This fall we've had the occasion to open
our doors to new students and a new
leader.
Welcome to incoming students-alumni
of the future!
Do you remember your first encounter
with the idea of St. John's? Your first visit
to a campus? First seminar? I certainly
do, and those memories rushed back
when; in late September, we hosted a
prospective student reception in my
home. "We" is the Twin Cities Chapter of
-the Alumni Association and my husband,
John. Together we welcomed a group of
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below.for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
SOS-275-90I2
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
4I0-47 2-9IS8
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
4I0-28o-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
6r7-964-4794
AUSTIN
John Strange
2I0-392-SSo6
Bev Angel
5I2-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
': .. thefoture ifthe
college seemJ' stronger
and brighter this year
than ever_ ifore."
b
young and enthusiastic would-be Johnnies
and their parents . It was a remarkable
gathering in many ways in addition to the
personal time travel it afforded.
One of the prospectives appeared with
her mother in tow-an alumna herself,
Annapolis class of 70-something.
Another brought a sibling who began
the afternoon clearly bored beyond belief
and ended it rather curious about this
strange place and the education it ofiered.
Another parent had read the great
books in her youth without benefit of
conversation. She was thrilled to find out
(via the "The Following Teachers Will
Return ... " mailing) that such a place as
St. John's existed. Her son was excited,
too. Next fall he'll be off to Annapolis
while she joins us for chapter seminars
and contemplates the possibilities of the
Graduate Institute.
The story is that prospectives who
attend such receptions are much more
likely to come to the college than those
who have no personal contact. It was a
delightful party, and the Santa Fe Admissions office made it quite easy! If you are
interested in hosting such an event, contact the Admissions office nearest you.
Not onlyvvill you be doing the College and
the prospectives a favor, but you'll also
find an occasion to revisit memorable
moments from your youth.
Welcome to President Peters!
As alumni from the East and West, we
are pleased to welcome Mr. PeteTs as the
new president of the Santa Fe campus.
Mr. PeteTs' experiences have prepared him
well for a role of productive leadership in
the college community. He has dedicated
DALLAS/,FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
8I7-72I-9II2
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
720-746-I496
GLENDA H. EoYANG, PRESIDENT
ST.JOHN's CoLLEGE ALuMNI AssociATION
himself to learning and supporting the
environments of learning; he has managed
administTative functions that are similar in
size and structure to the College; and he
engages with a kind of seriousness and
attention that we like to think is characteristic of our community.
We are pleased that MT. Peters and his
lovely wife, Eleanor, will be joining us in
January. The Alumni Association Board
of Directors will be looking for ways to
support him and the College under his
leadership, and we encourage our fellow
alumni to do the same.
With a constant supply of eager students
and a promising new leader in Santa Fe,
the future of the college seems stronger
and brighter this year than ever before.
Thanks to all who continue to make the
idea of the college a reality: members of
the Board ofVisitors and GovernOTs,
administration, faculty, current students,
alumni, and friends.
For yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
Glenda H. Eoyang
President
St. John's College Alumni Association
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
4I5-'{3I-8804
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-I8I4
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
2I.5-465-0244
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465-778I
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4I5I
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
S62-426-I934
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freen1an
6I2-822-32I6
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works. com
NEW YORK
Daniel Van Doren
9I4-949-68II
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
6rg-423-4972
{ THE CoLLEGE . St. fohn 's College . Winte r 2005
45
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
9 I 9 -9 68-4856
. WASHINGTON, D.C .
Jean Dickason
gor-6gg-6207
}
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
4I3-648-oo64
ISRAEL
Emi Geiger Leslau
IS Aminadav Street
Jerusalem 93549
Israel
9-722-67I-7608
boazl@cc.huji.ac.il
�~-------------------------------------------~----~--------------------------------------------~
{ALUMNI AssociATION NEws}
HoMECOMING
CHARLOTTE KiNG (CLASS OF I959) FOUND AN
OASIS FROM RACISM AT ST. JoHN'S.
ARouND THE CHAPTERs:
TwiN CITIES
DISCOVERING
HoNoRs
The Alumni Association extended its
highest honor, the Award of Merit, to two
Annapolis alumni at Homecoming in
October. William Carter, class ofig1~o,
was recognized for his contributions in the
field of technical education; Charlotte
King, class of rgsg, was honored for her
contributions to the field of social service.
The association named Glenn HousleyAnnapolitan, sailmaker, and Johnnie
supporter-an honorary member of the
Class of 2004 in recognition of his
contributions to the life of the college,
specially its students and alumni.
Dr. Carter was nominated for his award
by Bill Reynolds, also of the class ofig4o,
with whom he also attended Charlotte Hall
Military Academy. Dr. Carter enlisted and
served in the Navy after graduating from
St. John's. He went on to a career as an
executive with the Northwestern Mutual
Life Insurance Company, but it was in the
field of education that he made his real
mark. He was a founding father of Delaware
Technical and Community College in
Georgetown, Del., and served on its board
of trustees for more than I3 years. The
\Villiam A. Carter Partnership Center on
the Delaware Tech campus is named in his
honor.
After earning his doctoral degree from
Berne University in rgg8, Dr. Carter turned
his attention to the use of computers in
public school classrooms. The Teacher
Assistance Program he founded is now
being used in schools with great success.
Dr. Carter has served on numerous
state, regional and national boards and
{ALUMNI AssociATION NEws}
Maryland's Social Services Administration,
where she was responsible for a $300
million budget and the operation of all
family services and child welfare prograrn:s
in the state.
Miss King has served on the Anne
Arundel Commission for Women, the
Anne Arundel County Ethics Commission,
and the YMCA Board of Directors. In addition, she has volunteered time to more
than a dozen coalitions and commissions
devoted to helping women, chHdren, and
families.
In accepting her award, Miss King said
that although it was difficult to endure the
racism she encountered in the city of
Annapolis in the rgsos, she found in
St. John's an "oasis."
"St. John's is one of my longest and most
profound relationships," she said. "It has
all the characteristics of a good friend; it
has taught me, guided me, challenged me,
and supported me .. .St. John's enabled me
to be a better person by giving me an
expanded vision oflife and its infinite
opportunities for learning, discovery,
and actualization. "
When Miss King returned to work and
live at St. John's more than a decade later,
with her 7-year-old daughter Rachel in tow,
Annapolis had become a "hotbed of civil
rights activity." Here, Miss King found her
new challenges in the area of public service.
"I am so thankful to the college and the
Alumni Association for reminding me that
my life had meaning and that I should take
pride in some of my achievements,"
Miss King said.
At the All-Alumni meeting, Glenn
Housley joined the class of 2004, receiving
a college cap and gown along with his
honor. For IS years, Mr. Housley has hosted
St. John's students on the college's Annual
Sail Picnic and has introduced other
students to the art of sail making.
In his tribute to Mr. Housley, Chris
Denny (Ag3) said: "Glenn and his wife,
Sus3an Borden (A87) , the college's director
offoundation relations}, have opened the
doors of their home to students and faculty
with gracious hospitality through the years.
Students who know Glenn in his many
roles-sailor, craftsman intramural
competitor, and friend-are grateful for his
participation in the life of the college."_.
commissions, including the Delaware
Higher Education Commission and the
National Commission for the Support of
Public Schools. In 2000, he received the
Order of the First State from the governor
of Delaware, an award the recognized his
contributions to improving the quality of
life for residents of the state.
"It is gratifying to have one's efforts
recognized, but it is especially so that this
award comes from all of you," Dr. Carter
said at the Homecoming banquet. "I have a
special place for it right here," he added,
tapping his chest, "and I'll keep it there
for always."
Dr. Carter acknowledged the support
and assistance of his "capable and longsuffering wife, Ann," and introduced his
grandson, Matt Carter, (Ao8). "I have been
lucky enough to be in the right places, at
the right times, to be able to help make
good things happen," he said.
A native of New York, Charlotte King
became one of the first African-American
students to graduate from St. John's. After
graduation, she went on to a career in
social services and today is a senior human
services executive and clinical therapist.
In rg7o, she returned to St. John's to help
establish the college's first counseling
program. She entered public service,
becoming assistant director of the Anne
Arundel County Department of Social
Services, and later directed social services
in Charles County. She served as the
executive director of Associated Catholic
Charities in Washington, D.C. In rggo,
she was appointed executive director of
WILLIAM CARTER (CLASS OF I940) WAS
HONORED FOR HIS COWfRIBUTIONS TO
EDUCATION.
{ THE
CoLLEGE.
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
}
AMERICA
BY }UDY KISTLER-ROBINSON (SF77, SFG179)
For several years the Twin Cities alumni
chapter has engaged in reading books according to a theme. Mter a year-long theme on
tragedy, we read what was for some of us an
arduous list of Goethe's literature and scientific writings for a ydr. With that ambitious
undertaking completed, we had no theme in
mind when one member suggested reading
The Confidence Man by Herman Melville.
None of the group had yet read it, but the
keywords "travel" and "Mississippi" spurred
us to read TWain's Adventures ofHuckleberry
Finn first, followed by The Confidence Man.
At that time, we weren't sure whether our
theme should be travelogues or river tales.
Our theme evolved into "Who are we as
Americans?" when we chose to read
Tocqueville 's Democracy in America next
(over three months).
Since the time period of our readings started in the early rgth century, we attempted to
move gradually into the 2oth century and get
a range of different perspectives. Our readings encompassed W.E.B. DuBois' Souls of
Black Folk, Willa Cather's Death Comes for
the Archbishop, Henry James's Washington
Square, Sinclair Lewis's The Jungle, Jack
Kerouac's On the Road, and Anne Fadiman's
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down:
A Hmong Girl, Her American Doctor, and the
Clash oJTwo Cultures. Although our members all agreed we could have stayed on this
theme for years without even scratching the
surface, we ended our investigation into the
American psyche with an American Western
film. Which one to watch caused more
debate than any reading selection, but we
selected The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valence, directed by John Ford, because
we'd heard that Eva Brann once led a
seminar on it.
Many exciting and relevant questions came
up in the course of our readings and discussions. Some of the recurring ones:
What would Tocqueville say about
2-oth-century America? This surfaced in
discussions on immigrant experience and
cultural/ class clashes .
Questions of culture, as seen through the
immigrant experience. How does a group (or
individuals within a group) both keep a former culture and found a new one? Is assimilation inevitable, or does this very process end
up changing the dominant culture too?
How do time and experience change Western archetypal ideas, such as democracy?
What do we value?
How do we deal with the precarious and
important balance of individualism versus
the common good?
What are the different ways to approach
building a society?
What is the American myth? What are the
stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and
is there a basis for these?
Participants seemed to enjoy this theme
greatly, both due to the variety of readings
available within it as well as the timeliness of
the topic in this election year. Next up for our
chapter: epic adventures and journeys, starting with the Odyssey.-$-
47
ST. JOHN~S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in the
St. John' s College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors elected
by and from the alumni body. The Board meets
four times a year, twice on each campus, to
plan programs and coordinate the affairs of the
Association. This n ewsletter within The College magazine is sponsored by the Alumni
Association and communicates Alumni
Association news and events of interest.
President- Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President-Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary- Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address- Alumni Association,
St. John's College, P.O Box 28oo, Annapolis,
MD 2r404, or u6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Awards of Merit go to alumni who have
made outstanding contributions to the
college, their professions, or the nation.
Honorary Alumni awards go to individuals who have made significant differences
in the lives of students or the college
without having been enrolled as students.
At-Large Directors of the Alumni Association Board are elected by members of the
Association to represent them in the
decision-making processes.
Alumni-elected members of the Board
ofVisitors and Governors provide unique
alumni perspectives to inform the
decisions that set policy for the college.
Officers of the Alumni Association are
elected to provide support and leadership
to the Alumni Association Board of
Directors.
Do you know anyone-alumnus or
not-who should be recognized as an outstanding member of our community?
If so, please contact our Nominations
Committee chair Steve Thomas at
sthomas@fsa.com. Please provide your
name, class year, contact information
for you and the nominee, and a brief
explanation of your nomination._.
CALL FOR
NoMINATIONS
The St. John's College Alumni Association
recognizes members ofthe community in a
variety of ways.
. MEMBERS OF THE TWIN CITIES CHAPTER TOOK A
LITERARY JOURNEY THROUGH I9TH- AND 20THCENTURY AMERICA.
{ TH E
CoLLEGE .
St. f ohn's College. Winter 2005
}
�- -- - - - -- - --·--- ·
{ST.
}oHN~s
FoREVER}
Experience the beauty of early summer
along the San Juan, Colorado, or Green
rivers in an outdoor adventure led by
Mark St. John, director of student activities
in Santa Fe. This adults-only trip is open
to all alumni and their spouses/partners,
but is limited to r6 participants. Participants are invited to camp on the launch
site on Thursday, June r6.The cost
is $300. Contact the Alumni Office at
sos-984-6103, or e-mail Roxanne
Seagraves at rseagraves@sjcsf.edu for
more details. By April I, the office will
know which river has been chosen for
the trip.
THEigo8FOOTBALLTEAM,
AT A TIME INTERCOLLEGIATE
ATHLETICS THRIVED AT
ST.
JoHN's.
GLORY DAYS
n October ro, 1936,
The Black and Orange of
St. John's College entered
the field before s,ooo fans
in Ashland, Va., to face the
Randolph-Macon Yellow
Jackets. The Johnnies were clearly outmatched by the Jackets, who were expecting
to add an 18th game to their winning streak.
But the Johnnies, well prepared by new head
coach Valentine "Dutch" Lentz, held back
Randolph-Macon's star quarterback. Neither team scored until Johnnie Lambros
(class ofrg38) passed the ball to Bill
Stallings (class of 1939), who crossed the
goal line. The game ended in a 7-0 victory
for the Johnnies, the second in a six-game
winning streak.
But the glory days for the college's
athletic teams were waning. In earlier years,
even as the college's academic program
struggled, the athletic program thrived.
Championship lacrosse and football teams
regularly humbled rivals including Johns
Hopkins and the new state college,
Maryland Agricultural, now the University
participate in intercollegiate sports.
In the account given in J. Winfree Smith's
A Search for a Liberal Education, Barr
cited difficulties in scheduling games,
adding that intercollegiate athletics
"involves substituting a spectator
psychosis for student participation."
Lentz left St. John's and later became
head basketball coach at West Point.
Seniors from the class ofr939 voiced
their disappointment with Barr's decision
in thatyear'sRat-Tat, the college yearbook. "With the graduation of our class,
intercollegiate sports pass out of the
picture. And while it is no more our
purpose to bring up that question than
to re-fight the Civil War .. .looking at the
list of our activities, we find that half of
the class played [a sport] at one time or
another during our stay here."
The yearbook writers couldn't have
anticipated how many Johnnies still play
sports. More than roo of the students in
Annapolis and about J20 in Santa Fe take
part in intramurals.
of Maryland. The Johnnies' 62-0 victory
against MaJ:yland in r8gg recently made
the front page of the Washington Post as
one of Maryland's 13 worst losses in
football, a sidebar to a story on a Virginia
Tech-Maryland game.
The brilliant rg36 season was attributed
to some outstanding players and the coaching prowess of Lentz, a rgr8 alumnus who
became athletic director later that season.
A professional sports star in football and
baseball, Lentz had played with the Orioles
basketball team in the Eastern League and
was a high school coach until he returned
to his alma mater in 1926. The 1937 season,
with only two wins and one tie in a ro-game
season, was attributed to a tough schedule
and several injuries. The great triumph of
the final season, rg38, was a o-o tie with
Johns Hopkins, with whom the Johnnies
had the third-oldest sports rivalry in
intercollegiate sports. Failing to win a
single point that year, the team earned the
nickname "the galloping goose-eggs."
In 1939, President Stringfellow Barr
announced the college would no longer
{ THE
Co LL EGE.
St. fohn 's College. Winter 2005
-CHRISTOPHER UTTER
}
(Ao6)
Reunion classes are '70, '75, 'So, '85, 'go,
'95, 'oo. This year, a special roth anniversary reunion is planned for Eastern
Classics participants. Events include
reunion class parties and seminars, the
annual Alumni Art Show, Homecoming
Dinner Dance, Friday Night Lecture
(relating to Eastern Classics), and a
Saturday night Midsummer's Night Ball.
Meet the new president of the campus,
Michael Peters, over Sunday Brunch.
Join Annapolis president Christopher B.
Nelson and Santa Fe president Michael P.
Peters for an "Evening of Conversation"
about the state of the college and plans for
securing its future.
The venue is the Fogg Museum of Art
at Harvard University, and guests will have
the opportunity to tour the museum's
galleries before and after the program.
Beer, wine, and light fare will be served,
and there's plenty of time set aside to allow
Johnnies to catch up with each other and to
hear about what's happening in Annapolis
and Santa Fe.
This year's summer program is a week full
of intellectual stimulation, fun events on
and off campus, and a special participatory
theater event. Alumni can choose from
three seminars:
Chushingura, or The Treasury ofLoyal
Retainers, led by Claudia Honeywell
Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, led by
Kenneth Wolfe and Jay Smith
Milton, Paradise Lost, led by Eva Brann
and David Carl
Participants can also explore A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest by
joining a Shakespeare Reader's Theatre
production of the comedy. Reader's
Theatre is minimalist theatre in which
the script is used openly, staging is simple,
and no full sets or costumes are involved.
Special outings include a picnic and winery
tour along the Rio Grande and Puccini's
Turandot at the Santa Fe Opera. For information on fees, housing information, and
hotel discounts, visit the college's Web site
(click on "Alumni" and choose activities in
Santa Fe) or call the Alumni Office at
sos-984-6!03.
A QUIET MOMENT BY THE POND DURING
SANTA FE's HoMECOMING LAST suMMER.
September 30-0ctober 2
Reunion class years are ' 45, 'so, 'ss. '6o,
'6s.,
,
,
Alla11
Ce
"An Evening of Conversation"
6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday, March rs.
Fogg Museum of Art ·
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge
RSVP by March r: 410-295-sssr, or
alexandra.fotos@sjca.edu
This event is the first of four planned
for 2005; similar gatherings for alumni,
parents and friends will take place in
San Francisco, Albuquerque/Santa Fe,
and Philadelphia later in the year.
:~~ DATE DUE
I
Back cover: Photo by David Trozzo
{T
H E
CoLL
E G E .
St. fohn 's College . Winter 2005
}
�•
STJOHN'S
COLLE~GE
PERIODICALS ·
POSTAGE PAID
ANNAPOLIS · SANTA FE
PUBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P.O.
Box 28oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
2I404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
~I
�
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
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The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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thecollege2001
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48 pages
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The College, Winter 2005
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Volume 31, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2005.
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St. John's College
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2005
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pdf
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The College Winter 2005
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Deimel, August
Goyette, Barbara
Hughey-Comers, Erin
Knapp, Carolyn
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Rinn, Natalie
Seagraves, Roxanna
Utter, Christopher
Weiss, Robin
White, Roseanna
Johnson, David
Eoyang, Glenda H.
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6b8d06ce38e6a21ddf56bf9ce5c6de77.pdf
10f3c0274f819bdc99f5ccb9601c60c5
PDF Text
Text
SPRING
.
2- 0
ANNAPOLIS
-..
0
5
�SPRING
THE
VOLUME
31,
0
THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI OF ST. JOHN 'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS • SANTA
2,005
I SSUE
FE
{CONTE NTS }
PACE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
2
BOATHOUSE REPUBLIC
Spending a sabbatical at St. John's gives
the president of Randolph-Macon College
a glimpse of sports and the Program.
PACE
14
BROTHER ROBERT
He came as a visitor to learn more about
the great books program; he ended up
becoming a treasured member of the
St. John's community.
PACE
8
PAGE
14
18
PROFILES
30 On "Marketplace" David Brown (AGI95)
talks business.
34 Newspaper editor Julia Goldberg (SFgr)
Annapolis tutor John Verdi points to the
writers who most influenced Nietzsche,
including Emerson, Plato, and Pascal.
likes to make waves.
38 Nathan Wilson (AGio1) unveils shroud
mysteries.
PAGE
18
44 STUDENT VOICES
A Johnnic ponders what it means to be a
member of a community oflcarners.
NIETZSCHE HAUS
In Sils-Maria, a Johnnie revisits the ideas
of her senior essay.
PACE
28 BIBLIOFILE
21 ALUMNI NOTES
WRITERS
23
LETTERS
Annapolis tutor Eva Brann shares
aphorisms in Open Secrets/Inward
Prospects.
NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITE
PACE
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
Michael Peters settles in.
A new dean in Annapolis.
A conversation across generations.
Grappling ideas-and more-in Santa Fe.
Warren Spector (A81) funds
Annapolis dorm.
46 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
' FOREVER
48 ST. JOHNS
26
CROQUET
There's always next year.
PAGE
26
ON THE COVER
Nietzsche
Illustration by David Johnson
2
�{FROM
THE
{FROM THE BEL L
BELL TOWERS}
A NEW DEAN IN ANNAPOLIS
MICHAEL P ETERS
On the Job in Santa Fe
It's been a busy six months for
Michael Peters, president of the
Santa Fe campus. On January 17,
he arrived in his office in Weigle
Hall, and a few hours later,
donned academic robes to
deliver his first Convocation
address to January freshmen.
Then the college's Board of
Visitors and Governors arrived
on campus for four days of
meetings, and the pace has
hardly slacked ofT since.
In spite of a busy schedule,
Mr. Peters has made it a priority
to set aside time to get to know
students and the Program by
sitting in on seminar with the
January freshmen. Although he
is juggling a great deal of out-oftown travel, he's been able to
make at least one seminar a
week and hopes to continue
with the JFs through most of the
summer. He does the reading,
sits in the side chairs-as
prospectives and other guests
do-and takes in the conversation. As a West Point graduate,
former career Army officer, and
most recently, former executive
vice president of the Council
on Foreign Relations, he particularly enjoyed the discussions
on Thucydides.
"There is so much in Thucydides that directly paraUels the
world today," he says. " Right
now on the global stage we are
dealing with many of the same
issues and facing many of the
same challenges."
He also was a member of a
senior essay committee on
LIBERAL ARTS
AND CITIZENSHIP
From Mr. Peters' Convocation speech, January 17,
2005
" ....You and I will be participating actively in this intellectual
community-a community which believes chat a liberal education is good for its own sake, but is also crucial for citizens of
our country and our world if, as former Dean Scott Buchanan
wrote in the college catalog from the late '30s, we are to:
'Distinguish fact from fiction, between principle and case,
between opinion and insight, between propaganda and
instruction, and between truth and falsity.'
"These attributes of citizenship are as important now as
they were in the dark days prior to World War II. Today, our
nation honors the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, who
demonstrated that the ideas and character of one man can have
a profoundly positive effect on many.
"It has become almost a cliche to say we are part of an
interconnected and complex world-a world that faces profound
issues of war and peace, poverty and plenty, disasters, plagues
and pestilence both natural and man-made, to name a few.
These issues require thoughtful and informed public debate if
we are to come up with imaginative and workable solutions.
Dealing with these problems makes a liberal education not a
luxury, but a necessity. In the individual and collective choices
we must all make, bumper stickers won't do and you won't find
bumper stickers at St. John's." ♦
{T
THE
Co
LL
B .
The Brothers Karamazov-one
of the highlights of his St. John's
experience to this point.
Observing January freshmen
take their first tentative steps in
the Program and participating
in a senior's culminating experience gave him appreciation for
the growth a student experiences in four years at St. John's.
There's also a great deal
of work to be clone in cultivating relationships with the
community and the state of
New Mexico. A step in that
direction was hosting the
state's Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness on campus.
The event attracted state
leaders including Gov. Bill
Richardson and U.S. Sen.
Jeff Bingaman to the
St. John's campus.
The schedule for Mr. Peters
and his wife, Eleanor, won't
slow down much this summer.
He'll be busy greeting visitors
to the campus who come for
Summer Classics, hosting his
first Homecoming in July, and
getting ready for his October z8
inauguration. At his request,
the inauguration ceremony
will be simple and without
much fanfare.
St. John's College . Spring 2005 )
ELEANOR AND MIKE PETERS HAVE
BEEN ON THE ROAD, MEETING
ALUMNI AND FRIENDS.
"There isso
much in
Thucydides
that directly
parallels the
world today. "
MICHAEL PETERS,
SANTA FE PRESIDENT
St. John's students continue
to surprise him with their
diverse talents and extraordinary thirst for learning. " I often
reflect on these young men
and women and what their
contributions will be to our
world. They're learning,
through the Program and the
method, to address the most
important questions life asks of
us-helping them learn not what
to think, but how to think." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
Shortly after President
Christopher Nelson announced
that tutor Michael Oink (A75)
was selected dean of the
Annapolis campus, Dink
received both "congratulations
and condolences" from his
colleagues.
The congratulations referred
to the great honor it is to be
selected by one's peers for
such an important position.
The condolences-most meant
in jest-spoke to the burdens of
the job: long hours spent in
committee meetings, hiring
and tenure decisions, meting
out justice in disciplinary
issues, and making other
difficult decisions that affect
the lives of students. It's also
not easy to take a long breakfive ye ars-from the classroom.
"It's true that tutors regard
ourselves as model learners,"
says Dink. "And there's always
the sacrifice of giving up our
primary activity for a while.
It's probably love for the
community as a whole that
motivates any tutor to want to
be dean. You have the chance
to see that St. John's is the best
that it can be."
Dink looks forward to
moving into the dean's position
July 1, succeeding Harvey
Flaumcnhaft, who served for
eight years. " It's an opportunity for a more thorough and
deeper involvement with the
college," he says. "It's a
challenge."
He feels fortunate that
his predecessor made great
strides in his years as dean: in
faculty development, support
for students, and forging bonds
with Santa Fe. "I'm very grateful to Harvey- he's left things
in great shape," he says.
After spending a year-ancl-ahalf at Harvard, Dink entered
St. John's as a Febbie. A high
school English teacher had
suggested the great books
program at St. John's, but at
the time Dink believed, "I
could get the same thing at any
good school." However, in his
philosophy classes, Oink found
his professors lecturing from
notes or teaching their own
books. He wasn't reading the
books he wanted to read and
wasn't encountering many
students who were serious
about their studies.
He returned to Harvard after
an unsatisfying first year, but
by the middle of sophomore
year, his thoughts returned to
St. John's. "J spent the reading
period for my exams at Harvard
filling out the Febbie application," he says.
After St. John's, Oink went
on to graduate study in philosophy at Catholic University.
Five short years after graduating from the St. John's, he had
{ T THECo
.
TOWERS}
completed the coursework for
his doctorate and was back at
St. John's as a tutor in Santa Fe.
"I knew I would like to be a
teacher, and the idea of coming
back as a tutor had been in the
back of my mind through grad
school," says Dink. In the
summer of 1980,Dink received
a call from Robert Bart, then
dean in Santa Fe, who needed
to fill a last-minute appointment. Dink flew o ut for an
interview and joined the
faculty.
WHILE MICHAEL DINK (A75) WILL
MISS THE CLASSROOM, HE IS LOOK·
ING FORWARD TO THE CHALLENGES
OF BEING DEAN.
In 1984,he transferred to
Annapolis where he also served
as co-director of athletics, first
with tutor Bryce Jacobsen
(class of 1942), and later with
Roberta Gable (A78). He was
then and remains a big fan of
St. John's College . Spring 2005 }
3
the college's intramural
program. " Intramm·als allowed
me to play sports, and I became
a pretty active athlete," he says.
Dink received a grant from
the National Endowment for
Humanities that allowed him to
spend a year pursuing questions in the works of Plato and
a second year leading a faculty
study group and delivering a
lecture.
Dink's three-year term as
director of the Graduate Institute in Annapolis from 1998 to
2001 was good preparation for
the dean's office, he believes.
"I t's on a much smaller scale,
but the responsibilities are
similar-you're involved with
other segments of the college
community, publications,
financial aid, transcripts, being
responsible for students. It
does give you some sense of
what's required in the dean's
office."
Dink looks forward to
working with "all segments of
the community, including
Santa Fe, supporting younger
faculty, and just hoping to find
ways to keep things running
smoothly." Among the changes
scheduled to occur in his
deanship is the discontinuation
of the Febbie program in
Annapolis, with the last class
entering in January 2006.
(The program will continue in
Santa Fe.) Does he have mixed
feelings, since the Febbie
program allowed him to enter
St. John's when he was ready?
While it's hard to see traditions
go, Dink says, the decision
was in the best interest of the
students.
"Febbies get a truncated
version of the Program, and it
puts a lot of stress on the students," he says. "In recent years
most Febbies have been students who would have come in
the fall ifwe had let them." ♦
-ROSEMARY HARTY
�4
THE
{FROM
THE
so-YEAR CONVERSATION
When women from the first coed graduating class at St. John's
returned to the college for a day with women of the current
graduating class, we did what we always do at St. John's: have
conversations. From a leisurely lunch to a seminar on John KeaLs'
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Virginia Woolf's "On Not Knowing
Greek" to a dinner at the Boathouse, a steady flow of conversation
continued, tying 1955 to 2005 as solidly as the conversation in a
freshman seminar ties new Johnnies to Socrates and Agamemnon.
Toward the end of the evening, Missy Skoog (Ao5), who
helped organize the day's events, spoke of the inspiration the
women of 1955provide for women of the current class. It was an
inspiration of which I was not much aware before meeting the
women from 1955. In my own experience at the college, I have
only recently thought of my presence as a woman in addition to my
presence as a student. The struggles I have experienced and the
ways I have questioned the Program and myself have felt very
personal. It is only recently that I have seen the ways I share those
struggles with others.
Over meals with Barbara Brunner Kiebler (A55), Cornelia
Hoffman Reese (A57) and Emily Martin Kutler (A55) , J saw that
the uncertainty I'm going through as I'm about to graduate is
perhaps a natural result of having a Johnnie's philosophical bent
and widespread interests. At lunch, Kiebler told Samantha Buker
(Ao5) and me a life story that included four children, graduate
courses in mathematics, and a law degree she earned in her 40s.
It put my own varied plans in perspective. I'm someone interested
in questioning and experiencing, like Johnnies have always been.
This interest is clearly what brought the first women to the
BELL TOWER S }
{FROM
college. Everyone I asked said t hey were not aware of making
history when they decided to come to St. John's. Though Kiebler
said she felt "on display" once she arrived at the college, the
decision co attend was based on a love oflearning rather than a
conscious effort to change the status quo.
Reese said she fell in love with St. John's as soon as she saw that
questions and answers were "part of the learning process ... for
both the students and the faculty." She said she had often been
told in high school, "That's a very good question, Miss Hoffman,
and I'm sure you realize why we don't have time to answer it." At
St. John's, she encountered a very different attitude toward asking
questions. "I felt like I blossomed," she said. "I felt like all my
eagerness to learn had a place to go, and a way to get there."
Talking to the first women at St. John's was fun and comfortable. We shared the common ground of the St. John's Program,
and therefore had a base from which Lo compare and consider
our life experiences. Carolyn Banks-Leeuwcnburgh (A55), who
couldn't make the event, but shared her memories in a phone
conversation, said she believes the Program produces this ease of
connection by being "so different and unique, it's timeless."
Though much of what I realized that day had to do with the
similarity of all women and of all Johnnies, I was also deeply
impressed by the courage the first women showed in coming to
such a deeply intellectual school at a time when there were doubts
on all sides as to a woman's ability to handle such a thing. Women
were alJowed to apply to St. John's in 1951 because of several
issues, according to Barbara Goyette (A73, vice president for
advancement in Annapolis). These included then-president
Richard Weigle's commitment to co-education, low enrollment at
the college, and a strong interest among women in attending
St. John's. When the women did enroJJ in 1951, they came in spile
of resistance from some
tutors and students.
Goyette said, " The men
were unsure socially
about how it would
change the campus, and
they were unsure that the
women could do the
work.AJ1ofthatchanged
very quickly once the
women came."
The women did
encounter some prejudice. Leeuwenburgh
remembers being Lold in a
don rag, in response to
the character of her
opinions, that she should
"go make babies." Reese
continued on p. 5
LONGTIME ST. JOHN'S
LIBRARIAN CHARLOTTE
FLETCHER (HA69, CENTER
TH E
B E L L
hornbcams, loblolly pines,
sycamores, dogwoods, red oaks,
and maple trees.
N EWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
In late March, the Santa Fe
can1pus hosted the New Mexico
State Summit on 21st Century
Competitiveness. The summit
brought together senior
New Mexico business and
community leaders with national
economists, industry and policy
experts, and federal policymakers to discuss the state's
higher education and workforce
challenges in the new economy.
President Mike Peters gave the
welcoming remarks and introduced Gov. Bill Richardson and
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman.
The summit addressed one of
the state's thorniest problemsthe continuing drain of the
state's educated young people to
other states. After graduation,
the majority of college students
in New Mexico tend to leave
the state for better-paying jobs
elsewhere.
In his opening remarks,
Peters pointed out that St. John's
College actually helps reverse
this trend by attracting and
keeping college-educated people
in the stale. The college recruits
students from nearly every state
and several foreign countries,
yet approximately 25 percent of
St. John's graduates remain in
New Mexico after finishing their
studies. Currently almost 1,000
alumni live in New Mexico.
Approximately 31 percent serve
as teachers in public and private
high schools, as professors at the
state's colleges and universities,
and in the state's Department of
Education.
5
TO WE R S }
AP POI NTMENT S
In Annapolis: RUTHANDERSON
COGGESHALL
has been appoint-
development field. Arasteh
replaces RoBERTA G ABLE (A78),
who has moved from the Career
Services office co Admissions,
where she is associate director.
In Santa Fe: P ENELOPE
B ENEKOS (SF99) has been
named advancement officer.
Prior to her return to the Southwest, she taught English in
France, traveled throughout the
Mediterranean, and worked in
development at the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston.
St. John's in Annapolis received
a Plant Award (People Loving
and Nurturing Trees) from the
Maryland Department of Natural Resources for undertaking an
urban forestry program several
years ago. The inventory counted 118trees on the campus at the
time. Since then, another 90 or
so have been added, says Blythe
ed director of major gifts. Previously she was chief development
officer for the National Gallery
of Art, where she completed the
museum's New Century Fund
campaign and redirected the
gallery's development efforts to
solicit major gifts nationally and
locally. She also held leadership
positions at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine.
SrEFANlE TAKACS (A89) joins
the college as director of annual
giving from Abraham House in
the South Bronx, where she was
assistant director of operations
and development director.
Takacs had been a volunteer
fundraiser in Philanthropia
since 1998 and served as the
events committee chair for
Woods, the college's horticultur-
several years.
cation, "Girl Scout/STUDIO
ist. The college carefully tracks
the health of its trees, she adds.
Although the college and
community still miss the
magnificent Liberty Tree, the
campus is rich in American
is the
new Career Services director in
Annapolis. She brings to the
college more than six years of
experience in a variety of private
and p ublic settings in the career
2B Advisor Self-Study Guide."
The program was created for
older girls age II-r7, a group
that often loses interest in
ANNAPOLIS ENVIRONMENTAL
AWARD
SlWtRZAD ARAsTE:11
STUDENTS
ELIZABETI-1 V EGA (SFo6)
received an Excellence Award
from the Girl Scouts for a guide
she wrote to help orient leaders
of a new national program aimed
at keeping teenage girls in valved
in scouting. The award is given
annually co individuals whose
innovative contributions
significantly advance the work
of the council.
Vega wrote a 68-page publi-
scouting ♦
continuedfrom p. 4
remembers that some of her male classmates would make a point
of challenging women when they demonstrated propositions in
math class. Both women chalked this up to a lack of maturity on
the part of some of their classmaLes. Reese said that she felt "just a
little" hostility that seemed to come mostly from younger men
who didn't know how to handle the presence of women.
The women, regardless of these difficulties, acquitted themselves admirably. Goyette said, "They surprised everyone. I think
they surprised themselves." They returned to St. John's 50 years
laLer, confident in the abilities St. John's had given them, ready to
encounter another seminar. I hope to carry myself with that sort of
grace and ease someday. I hope I am as available to share questions and conversation as all these women did that day. I hope I am
ready to aim for the heart of any conversation, as Emily Kutler did
when she pursued the true intent of Woolf'sessay. I hope I will
walk, as Barbara Kiebler did when she accompanied me to a class
on Einstein and Minkowski, unhesitatingly toward any chance to
keep learning. ♦
TOP) JOINED 2005 AND 1955
CLASS MEMBERS FOR A
SAMANTHA BUKER (AOS) ANO SARAH CROOKE (A55) HAVE MUCH TO TALK
CELEBRATION OVER CROQUET
ABOUT DESPITE A SO-YEAR DIFFERENCE.
WEEKEND.
{ THE
C o COLLEGE
. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�6
{FROM THE
JOHNNIES GRAPPLE WITH
MORE THAN IDEAS
Jiu-Jitsu Takes H old in Santa Fe
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a new
addition to the martial arts
offerings on the Santa Fe
campus, but it's become
enormously popular in just a
few short months. C.J. McCue,
who joined the Santa Fe staff as
student activities coordinator
eight months ago, is an accomplished martial artist whose
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes
have attracted more than
30 students and inspired
several Johnnies to
enterand win-national
competitions.
During spring break,
McCue and seven ofher
students o·aveled to Las
Vegas. Nevada. to compete in a submission
wrestling tournament
for no-gi grappling and
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 1\vo
ofMcCue's students,
Alex Kongsgaard (SF05)
and Quinn Mulhern
(SF07), both blue belts,
took first place in their
divisions. McCue took
second place in the
women's advanced
~
division and third place ;
in the open-weight
!
women's division.
z~
]\1:,::Cue teaches
•
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in
the Gracie style, which was
created for self- defense. This
martial art relies upon body
mechanics and leverage rather
than strength, so a small person
can win against a bigger or
heavier competitor. That's one
reason the sport is popular with
women, says McCue.
There are two types of
Jiu-Jitsu: Brazilian, or modern,
was developed after 1900,
while Japanese Jiu-Jitsu is
considered traditional and dates
to pre-1900. Like many martial
arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu requires
a technical knowledge of
specific positions, development
of physical and mental strength,
and the use of strategy. However, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is
unique in that most of the
techniques involve grappling
on the ground. "Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu practitioners learn how
to defend themselves on the
ground," says McCuc. " Of
course this has enormous
real-world benefit as a selfdefense method for both me n
and women."
The clothing (gt) looks like a
traditional martial arts uniform
ofloose white pants and jacketstyle wrap shirt secured with
a belt.
"The gi is a very instrumental part ofBrazilian Jiu-Jitsu,"
says McCue. "Thegi can be
used as a way to control one's
opponent."
Most of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
techniques involve specific
positions. There are takedowns,
{ THE COLLEGE,
{FROM
BEL L TOW ERS}
self-defense techniques, and
striking, but the core of the art
involves mental so·ategy. That's
part of the appeal to Johnnies.
Competitors strive to improve,
maintain, or defend their
ground positions, along with
mastering submissions such as
chokes and armlocks.
Both Kongsgaard and
Mulhern apply themselves with
vigor to the martial art, as they
have with other endeavors.
After Kongsgaard graduated
from high school, he walked
500 miles from the CaliforniaOregon border to San Francisco, averaging 2,2, miles a day.
In addition to continuing his
wrestling training, Kongsgaard
ALEX KoNcscAARD (SF05) 1s
WRESTLED TO THE GROUND BY
QUINN MULHERN (SF07).
is an avid cyclist, a rock climber,
and a member of the St. John's
Search & Rescue team.
Mulhern aJso brings intensity
and dedication to his training,
says McCue. Mulhern's older
brother practices Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu and persuaded him to
take up serious study. "We
would wrestle, and I saw that
my brother's submission
St. John's Collese. Sprins 2005
}
movements were not angry, but
graceful and re laxed," he says.
He credits McCue, "a great
teacher," with helping him win
in Las Vegas. "She is able to
demonstrate something
physical in a way people really
respond to," he explains.
The psychological aspect of
competing is the most difficult,
says Mulhern, who practiced
breathing and visualization
techniques to enhance his
performance. "Adrenaline can
be one of your biggest enemies
because it can cause you to use
your energy right away," he
says. He credits his winning to
feeling calmer. "It's one thing
wrestling in class or wrestling
with your friends, but
another competing in a
tournament where you
have only four minutes
and you can easily
forget everything
you know. It's a lot
of pressure."
McCue looks forward to getting more
students involved in
sports at St. John's.
"While some Sc. John's
students are not very
physically active when
they first arrive at the
college, they find themselves in a community
of like-minded individuals and feel more
confident when they
discover the benefits of
physical activity," she
says. "You see students
make a connection to
something physical-whether
it is a martial art, climbing,
Search & Rescue, hiking,
skiing, winter camping, or
intramural activities. They run
with it because they've become
inspired by all this at a later
time in their life. For some it's
just the beginning." ♦
-ANDRA MAGURAN
TH E
B ELL
TO WERS}
7
NEw DORMITORY Is A GIFT FROM ST. JoHN's ALUMNUS
Spector Hall to Open in January
Warren Spector (A81) has
given the coJJege a generous
gift to fund, in his father's
memory, the building of a new
dormitory on the Annapolis
campus. Spector Hall, as the
dorm now under construction
will be named, together with
Gilliam Hall, which opened
last fall, will allow the college
to house 80 percent of its
students on campus.
Mr. Spector, President
and Co-Chief Operating
Officer of Bear, Stearns &
Co. Inc., a leading Wall
Street investment banking
and securities trading and
brokerage firm, says his gift
was motivated by his appreciation for the education he
received at St. John's.
"St. John's provides a
unique educational experience," said Mr. Spector,
a member of the college's
Board of Visitors and
Governors. " Building
this dorm will help
preserve the intimate
learning environment that
sets St. John's apart from
other liberal arts schools."
The college needs new
dormitories for two reasons.
Overcrowding in existing
dorms required the college
to convert some double
rooms into triples and
appropriate a few common
rooms for housing. The
college also wants to better
nurture a community of
learners by ensuring that
students who want to live on
campus can do so. I mpressed
by the recent renovation of
Mellon Hall's classrooms and
laboratories, Mr. Spector was
pleased to provide a gift to
further improve student life.
"The St. John's educational
experience is not limited to the
classroom. The ability for
students to learn from each
other is greatly enhanced by
living together on campus."
Mr. Spector continued, " For
me the dialogue with my
fellow students was a crucial
part of my education. I could
not be more pleased to further
the education offuture
generations by funding the
creation of a place for that
dialogue to take place."
Spector Hall wilJ house
40 students when it opens in
January 2.006. The dormitory
includes spacious common
areas, suite-style rooms, and
a tutor's apartment.
The building will be named
Spector Hall in memory of
Warren Spcctor's father, who
died in 1990. Philip Spector
had forged over his lifetime a
AN APPRECIATION FOR HIS ST. J OHN'S EDUCATION PROMPTED WARREN
SPECTOR TO FUND A NEW DORMITORY ON THE ST. JOHN'S CAMPUS.
"One cfthe most valuable tools I
gainedfrom my St. John s education
was the abtfity lo think critically. "
WARREN SPECTOR, A8I
{ THE
COLLEGE·
St. John's Collese · Sprins 2005
}
successful career as a contractor who was responsible for
numerous residential,
commercial, and industrial
projects in the Washington,
D.C., metropolitan area. "I
very much wanted to find a way
to honor my father. It seems
fitting considering his long and
successful career as a builder
that a structure is named for
him. It is my hope that he
would have been extremely
pleased with the results,"
Mr. Spector said.
Ironically, both of Mr.
Spector's parents were
initially concerned when he
announced his plans to
transfer from Princeton and
start again as a freshman at
Sc. John's. " It did not take
long for my parents to see
that I thrived in the environment of St. John's College,"
commented Mr. Spector.
"By the time I graduated,
they were big fans of the
St. John's education and
were pleased that I did not
go to college anywhere else."
One of several St. John's
alumni working at the top
of the investment field,
Mr. Spector credits the
college with providing him
with skills that have helped
him succeed in the fastpaced and ever-changing
world ofWall Street.
" One of the most valuable
tools I gained from my
St. John's education was the
ability to think cri tically," said
Mr. Spector. "In the highly
analytical and technologically
sophisticated world in which
we live, the ability to think on
one's own and make sense of
the seemingly endless data
that exists should not be
underestimated." ♦
�8
{LETTERS}
{LETTER S }
VARIED VIEWPOINTS
I must respond to Mary Campbell
Gallagher's rejection of Martin A. Dyer' s
diversity initiative. Ms. Campbell's principal objection is that Mr. Dyer relies on the
premise that different "life experiences"
will somehow enrich the college's seminars. She insists that he "present proof."
Well, I can-and so, I believe, can any
St. John's alum.
....Anyone who has gone through four
years of the Program knows that people
bring their "life experiences" into the
seminar room. Male, female, veteran, gay,
married, black, Mormon, elderly, handicapped, Orthodox Jewish-can anyone be so
naive as to believe that such factors don't
influence how we approach a text? This
doesn't mean surrendering to subjectivity.
But it does mean expanding the Annapolis
campus beyond affluent suburbs of Washington-Baltimore and New York City, the base
for the student body when I was a student.
No one is advocating affirmative actionthat is, preferential treatment to someone
because of his or her background. But the
college effectively makes decisions all the
time about the makeup of the student body
by the way it recruits and where. If the
college makes a concentrated effort to
increase diversity, it can only result in
livelier class discussion by including
more and varied viewpoints.
STEVE WEINSTEIN, A95
ON DIVERSITY
I agree with three statements in the letter
from Mary Campbell Gallagher (A6o)
published in the winter 2005 issue of The
College: (1) "all men are fundamentally the
same ...."; (2) "All men are educable without regard to the peculiarities of their ethnic
and racial backgrounds;" and (3) " ... students' racial and ethnic characteristics
[make] no discernible contribution to
their being able to read and think well."
I disagree, however, \.vith other assertions.
I do not believe that the Opportunity
Initiative is inconsistent with the college's
mission of providing a liberal education.
Although the college makes its unique
program equally available to, and welcomes
everyone, its recruitment efforts have not
been equally successful in attracting all segments of the population. A major purpose of
the initiative is to determine the reasons for
this failure and to work with the Admissions
office in devising corrective measures. Our
goal is to broaden the college's appeal to
people who do not now seem to understand
learn to function well in both, to speak and
act according to the expectations of each.
They can competently participate in and
contribute to ongoing St. John's dialogue
seen through the lens of upper middle-class
people of European heritage. But to feel safe
enough to share the particular lessons life
has taught them and to relate their own
unique backgrounds to the topics and readings being considered in seminar would
require the safety of numbers and the college
community's appreciation of the richness to
be gleaned from different heritages.
I know college recruiters, with the
support of alumni of color, are making
good-faith attempts at increasing the
diversity of students and faculty. I hope they
arc successful for the sake of all students.
that its program is also intended for them,
not change either the program or admission
policies.
The great books are indeed teachers, and
close reading of them and good logic arc the
principal means by which conversation is
advanced. Other factors also play an important role. "[P]eculiarities [borne] of...race
and ethnic backgrounds" are among them,
as are differences in economic status,
religion, nationality and personal life
experiences...My views of freedom and
justice, for example, are affected by the fact
that I am black, am two generations removed
from slavery, and grew up in Baltimore in
the 1930s and 40s and attended college in
Annapolis when racial discrimination and
segregation were still the way of life.
Blacks were denied basic opportunities....
I suggest that interactions among students
both in class and in their day-to-day social
lives are a vital part of teaching and learning.
In other words, the encounter of individuals,
separately and in concert, \vith the great
books is indispensable to St. John's unique
education.
MARTIN
PATIENCE GARRETSON SCHENCK,
POETIC PLANCK
I enjoyed Anna Perleberg's poem "Relativity"
in the Winter 2005 issue of The College. As
" Relativity" did mention haiku in the last
stanza, Joffer one ofmy own in response:
Late autumn
Reading Planck
In the cold room ...
A. OYER, AS2
SHARING LIFE LESSONS
LUCIA STAIANO-DANIELS, SF04
A recent letter suggested that diversity has
nothing to do with learning at St. John's;
that, on the contrary, it is the books that are
our teachers. I disagree. If we learned only
from the books, students could sit in their
rooms and read them by themselves. Rather,
it is the exchange of ideas that leads us to
enlarge our understanding of what the books
can teach us.
An African-An1erican student who has
been stopped by the police for "driving
while black" understands the relationship
between justice and power differently than
the daughter of a judge who sits beside him
in seminar. Someone who grew up in a working-class church with a ministry to the poor
understands the parables ofJesus differently
than someone from a place of worship
attended by the privileged. A Muslim reads
Genesis differently than either a Christian or
a Jew. These differing backgrounds and perspectives can greatly enrich the exchange
that takes place around the seminar table.
The challenge for the college is to attract
sufficiently large numbers of students and
faculty from diverse backgrounds to affect
the culture of the college. Members of
minority groups have learned to live in two
cultures, that of their ethnicity and that of
the dominant group they have encountered
in school and other public venues. They
{ 1' n ll Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Cuss OF l'.959
WEIRD SCIENCE
... .Infatuation, it seems, is frequently
the outcome of a close encounter with
Dr. Einstein's work, but I think we would aJJ
agree that St. John's College strives not only
to expose its students to the works of great
thinkers, and to impress upon its students
the importance of giving those thinkers
their due, but also it strives to equip its
students to be critical of what those thinkers
have to say. Education, Plato reminds us,
involves entrusting the cultivation of your
soul to another, so it is only prudent to exercise some caution (Protagoras 312c-313b).
As a theory ofrelativity, Dr. Einstein's
work should be properly understood as one
of reciprocity.
...A strict interpretation of relativity,
however, is no longer tenable. Relatively
well-known experiments with muons and
atomic clocks have demonstrated tha t
"clocks" moving at high speed do slow
down. Here is where things get peculiar.
A strict interpretation of relativity would
require that people riding on high-speed
airplanes see the clocks down on Earth slow
down. When the travelers return to their
earthbound comrades, there should be a
grand argument as each group asserts that
)
the other group's clocks were rwming slow.
Instead, there is agreement: the travelers
are younger than they would be if they had
stayed at home, and the difference is more
or less what Dr. Einstein's equations predict.
It is, then, a matter of fact, that relativity
effects are not reciprocal.
Oddly, then, experiments of this kind
demonstrate that there actually is such a
thing as absolute space, for we obviously
can decide who was moving and who was
standing still by seeing whose clocks were
slowed and whose were not. Further, until
someone can find a place where clocks run
faster than they do here on Earth, relativity
actually supports the claim that the earth is
absolutely at rest. But wait! It gets stranger:
if the Earth is at rest, then, since we see the
sun , moon, stars, and planets moving across
the sky, the evidence suggests that everything revolves around the Earth. And jL1st
to top it off, if everything revolves around
the Earth, then, since the universe is now
regarded as infinite, there is no reason not
to regard the Earth as the center of the
universe. Oh! The progress we've made!
At this point, the door stands "vide open
to supplement Dr. Einstein's theorywhich indeed, provides nothing beyond
what Aris to Ile would label a formal causeby reintroducing the aether as the material
cause, and so take a step towards developing
an account on the level of the efficient cause
(which is what any of the natural sciences, as
studies of how the material world works,
should strive to achieve). It would be most
mysterious , however, to use the very theory
that killed the aether to resurrect it.
Weird science? You'd better believe it.
But, at some point somebody will feel
emboldened to declare it to be nonsense,
and, at that time, there will be some need for
clear heads who can distinguish the baby
from the bath water. We all, I think, not only
hope, but expect that St. John's will be the
institution o f higher learning where those
heads get clarified ...
}OHN NEWELL, A86
__________
-'-'-.;;.;.;.
EINSTEIN OMISSION
Your capsule biography of Albert Einstein
on the inside cover of the [Winter 2005)
issue omitted two critical facts. The first
is that Einstein was a Jew. Although this
omission can be excused because it is a
matter of general knowledge, it is widely
assumed that because Einstein was never a
"religious" Jew his Jewish heritage was of
merely accidental significance until the
Nazis decreed otherwise.
9
l CAN IDENTIFY ONE OF THE STUDENTS IN THE OCTOBER CALENDAR PICTURE.. .JANE D'AGNESE
(A74) IS STRIDING UP TO THE QUAD AFTER LAB. LOOKING AT THE PICTURE, AND JUDGING FROM HER
ENTHUSIASM, l CAN STILL HEAR HER SAYING, "CHESTAH, CHESTAH, ARE YOU GOING TO THE PAHTY?"
(YouR CAPTION ABOUT SEMINAR AWAITING IS WELL-INTENTIONED, BUT I LIKE MY STORY BETTER.)
BEHIND HER IS POSSIBLY ME, THOUGH THE DRESS DOESN'T RING A BELL SO l WILL GLADLY CEDE TO
SOMEONE ELSE'S BETTER MEMORY AND IDENTIFICATION. SrrTING IN THE FOREGROUND IS, I'M
PRETTY SURE, PATRICK D'ADDARIO (A7x), OTHERWISE KNOWN ASP-DAD. -DEB Ross, A74
I do not think so. The Bavaria of
Einstein's youth was hardly a hotbed of
tolerance. Not only was the young Einstein
exposed to anti-Semitism; even ifhe and his
family were not "believing" Jews, he grew
up surrounded by believing Christians
receiving mandatory religious education
. .. .It is fair to suppose that this experience
as an intellectual as well as ethnic outsider
contributed to Einstein's ability to "think
outside the box," his ,villingness to explore
counter-intuitive models of the universe.
Second, the biographical sketch totally
omits the fact that Einstein was a committed
Zionist. Despite his principled disapproval
of ethnic nationalism, Einstein recognized
that Jews could not be fully accepted citizens
of European ethnic states, and needed their
own hom eland where they would not be
merely tolerated guests in an alien culture.
Well before Hitler came to power, Einstein
helped raise funds to buy land for Jewish
settlement and to support the Hebrew
University in Jerusalem. After the war he
pleaded for the creation of a Jewish state,
and in his old age was offered (and declined)
the largely-ceremonial presidency of the
State oflsrael.
It is important to remember that even
such a universalist and hlLmanist as Albert
{ 1' H
E
Co
L LE
c
E .
St. John's College . Spring 2005
Einstein insisted on the importance of a
Jewish state for the preservation of the
Jewish people and their unique contribution
to human culture.
KEVIN SNAPP, SF72
CALENDAR MYSTERIES REVEALED
The May photo in the 2005 Philanthropia
calendar was taken in '72 or '73. That's me,
third from the left with the scraggly hair and
beard, with my leg up on the bench. Kit
(Kathleen) Callender (SF73) is to my left,
and Bill Blount (SF73) is seated to her left.
Beyond that, I'm guessing-it's embarrassing
not to remember everyone's names.
My sons will get a real kick out of seeing
their papa "back in the day."
PtTER MEADOW, SF73
The College welcomes letters on issues of
interest to readers. Letters may be edited for
clarity and/ or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance of being
printed in their entirety.
Please address letters to: The College
magazine, St. John's College, Box z8oo,
Annapolis, MD 21404, or by e-mail to
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu.
)
�IO
{ATHLETIC S }
{ATHLETICS}
''Bein.g out on the Severn River at dawn . ..
is about as close to heaven as you wtll ever get. "
BOATHOUSE
REPUBLIC
BY ROGER H. MARTIN
Roger Martin, president of Randolph-Macon College in the team. Everyone." Leo seems to be looking directly at me,
Ashland, Va., spent a semester at St. John :S lastfall. His goal perhaps because I stick out in this crowd of youngsters. I am not an
was to experiencefreshman year at the college, in part to gain ordinary freshman, but a college president on sabbatical.
I decide to go out for crew. Since I cannot live in a freshman
some insight that might be helpful in shaping the
residence haJJ, crew will provide the chance for me to have contact
freshman-year experience at his college. Martin sat in on
with students outside of the classroom and give me an opportunity
freshman seminar andjoined the crew team. In November, he
to explore the unique connection here between academics and
joined competitors 40 years younger at the annual Head of athletics.
the Occoquan Regatta. His experience broadened his views
On September 7, about 60 students turn up at six in the morning
about college sports.
for the first crew practice. I recognize some of chem: Julie, Justin,
reshman orientation ends at Iglehart Hall,
the college's ancient gymnasium. One hundred of us are greeted on this withering
August afternoon by athletic director
Leo Pickens (A78). We sit on the floor in a
wide semicircle as this man of modest build
and piercing eyes looks over us in silence. I
sense that we arc in the presence of a sage.
We are not seated in a gymnasium, but
rather in a sacred building- a temple, Leo explains. He talks about
how athletics was as much a part of Greek culture and society as
political discourse and debate and tells us chat athletics must therefore be taken seriously and with reverence.
After describing the intramural sports and activities at the
college, Leo says something you would not expect to hear from an
athletic director: "Skill and previous experience are not required
here at St. John's, just tlzumos. Passion." As he says "tlzumos," he
pounds his chest. He concludes: "Everyone who shows up will be on
{ T u E Co
LL Ec E .
Victoria-all members of my freshman seminar. No one is saying
anythi ng, and the eyes of many are glazed over, probably from latenight reading.
Leo, also the crew coach, wears blue thermal overalls, a red
sweatshirt that says "Johnnies" in white letters across the front, and
a well-worn baseball cap. I suspect he knows what is going through
our minds at this very moment. We are all wondering why any sane
person would get up at five in the morning to spend two hours
engaged in punishing physical exercise, often in foul weather. "I
can promise you," he says, "that being out on the Severn River at
dawn on a crisp fall morning, watching the sun rising from the east
and the geese flying to the south as eight oars move together in perfect unison over the glistening water is about as close to heaven as
you will ever get in this life."
We don't have Jong to wait. Next morning we all march down to
the dock. The sunrise over the Severn is spectacular. The novices,
including me, climb into an 18-person training barge. As we row up
and down College Creek the poetry of Homer's Odyssey, the book
we are now reading in seminar, provides a balm for the pain I begin
to feel in my lower back.
St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
THU/IfOS- PASSION- IS WHAT L EO P ICKENS DEMANDS FROM HIS ATHLETES.
{ THE
Co
LL E c E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
�I2
{ATHLETICS}
{ATHLETICS}
The images and voices cfthe great books
are everywhere~ in the Boathouse as
we!f as on the Severn River.
ROCER MARTIN
When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
we hauled the vessels down to the sunlit breakers first ....
The crews swung aboard, they sat to the oars in ranks
And in rhythm churned the water with stroke on stroke.
And churn the water we do in a boat vaguely similar to the
Pentekontor that brought Odysseus and his crew to the ends of the
world. I am in first position in the barge and directly in front of me
sits a limber 17-year-old freshman. Mike, the assistant coach, who
is standing in the stern at the tiller, yells out, "Everyone in the
catch position, oars square and buried." Not knowing what the
catch position is, I lean back as far as I can-which is not very
far-and my oar immediately fouls the oar of my rowing
companion who is leaning very far forward. The result is a loud
noise and a huge splash as we start rowing.
The novices practice in this way on College Creek until we
become proficient enough to row in a proper eight. Over the next
several weeks, my rowing improves and as it does, I blend in with
the young men in my boat. I am no longer a college president, I an1
just another novice learning how to row. I keep my mouth shut, I
observe, and I listen.
Most student-athletes leave their studies behind when they go
to practice. Not at St. John's. The images and voices of the great
books are everywhere, in the Boathouse as well as on the Severn
River. It is now 6:30 in the morning and it's pitch dark. We are
rowing up the river to
the start of our race, past
the Naval Academy
bridge, past the Route 50
bridge. A month from
now, we will race against
other colleges on the
Occoquan Reservoir in
Northern Virginia, and
our practice races have
taken on a new intensity.
The sky is studded with
stars, still bright enough
to be seen above the dark
purple hew of the Chesapeake's eastern sky, and
there isn't a cloud to be
seen. Bobbing sailboat
masts look like black
sticks in the distance,
{ TH E
and I can imagine the port of Argos, and Agamemnon and
Menelaus leaving for Troy with the Greek armada to win back
Helen. Our own armada of two eights, two fours, and a single quad
docs a river turn just beyond the Route 50 bridge and at Leo's
command we race back to the end of the Naval Academy seawall, a
distance of some 5,000 meters. A gray-blue storm cloud suddenly
appears and empties its moisture into our low-lying shells, requiring the coxes to bail madly as they call out their commands. At the
finish, in complete exhaustion, I notice the geese Leo Pickens
promised several weeks ago, eight of them (like the number rowing in our boat), flying directly overhead toward Virginia, honking
loudly as they wing their way south. The vision suggests to me that
we will do well at Occoquan.
October is upon us. My seminar is reading Plutarch's Lives of
lite Noble Grecians and Romans, and my boat continues to
improve. Today, us our four racing shells approach the Naval
Academy bridge, rowing at a rather hectic pace over the usual
5,000-meter course, we see an armada of yellow Naval Academy
shells, approaching us from downriver. Laughter comes from one
of them as it passes to our starboard. The midshipmen are getting
a kick out of seeing this rather motley collection of}ohnnics. And
who can blame them? There they are, in their clean white t-shirts
with "NAVY" emblazoned on the chest, and dark blue shorts, all
looking extremely fit and athletic. Here we are, some of us in
multi-colored t-shirts, some obviously overweight, others rather
skinny, some men wearing earrings, others
sporting tattoos, and
one very tired 61-ycarold guy with a red beard
rowing in the numbertwo position.
This scene causes me
to ponder Plutarch's
biographies of Lycurgus
and Solon. As the leader
of Sparta, Lycurgus is
architect of laws which
are austere and unyielding. In Athens, where
Co LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
EVEN IN THE SHELLS ,
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT
THE BOOKS PERSIST.
}
Solon is the lawmaker,
individualism is honored.
Sitting in my shell and
watching our two very
different crews passing
each other on the Severn
River, I see how two
philosophies of society
exist side-by-side in Annapolis: St. John's, devoted to diversity and
pluralism, as Athens; the Naval Academy, with its focus on loyalty
to the corps, uniformity, and order, as Sparta.
Our training continues as November and the Head of the
Occoquan approach. I am amazed not only at how hard my teammates practice, but also how the great books arc ever part of
their chatter. Before launching our shells, I often hear students
talking about seminars, tutorials, or the Friday lecture. Even in
the boats, where crew is not supposed to talk, the great books
cannot be denied.
Our extremely capable cox is out of commission for a few weeks,
so a loquacious sophomore replaces her. While our regular cox is
all business and hardly ever talks except to give commands, her
substitute offers a running commentary on everything from
his favorite movies to college gossip to the current topics in
sophomore seminar. "Do you know what my tutor told us last
night at seminar?" he asks crew as we row out of College Creek
towards the Severn. His seminar is reading the Gospel of John.
"He said that because he first read the Bible in Greek he thought
that the first words of John were, 'The origin was the principle'
rather than, 'In the beginning was the Word.' "
As we round the seawall and head toward the Route 50 bridge,
now rov,ing at a fairly fast pace, his commentary regresses. He is
now talking about the Phoenicians. "Do you know why the
Phoenicians were the fastest rowers?" We are stumped. "Because
they had nubile Phoenician women to row home to." I find this
piece of information intriguing until, off to my port, I hear Leo
Pickens yelling at me from the skiff, "You're not focused Roger.
Snap those legs back. Square the oar. Drop the blade."
On November 6, the morning of the regatta. Leo assembles the
team in the back of the Boathouse. "Are you all ready for the
Festival of St. Occoquan?" he asks the assembled group. "OK,
now listen up. I have something important to say. First, I want to
commend all of you for the time and devotion you have given to
this sport. No matter how well you perform this afternoon, you
should all feel a great sense of accomplishment."
He continues by providing some interesting statistics. "Those
{ TH E
ON THE SEVERN AND IN
~ -........... SEMINAR, RocER MARTIN
( CENTER) SAW DEDICATION.
of you who are the grizzled veterans have put in
90 hours of practice, the
novices 80. And you've done this while being students in an
incredibly demanding academic program. Few athletes competing at Occoquan this afternoon have had to contend with the
incredible academic load all of you carry. You should feel extremely proud. You have achieved perfection. I pronounce this boathouse a republic."
In just six words, Leo says that we have come together as a team,
each doing his or her part, but each contributing to the good of
our community. Unity, one of the ideals of Plato's Republic, has
earned Leo's highest praise.We are not only rowing much better,
but we also care about each other. And there is a spirit-a team
spirit-that is very special. Clearly, we are far from perfect in our
rowing ability. But we really are, figuratively if not in reality, a
republic, and everyone understands exactly what our coach has
just said.
The race itself is a blur. My boat does reasonably well,
losing to the University of Maryland by only six seconds but
beating three other universities. However, before the day is out,
J witness C\vo contrasting scenes that speak to intercollegiate
athletics both in America and at my adopted college. As my wife
and I walk down the hill toward the launching docks just before
my race, I overhear a coach lecturing the women on a
large university team who are preparing to race. "You didn't get a
medal last year, girls. It was a real embarrassment to me personally and to the university. So are you going to screw up again this
year or win something?" I don't hear the rest of this speech as I
continue walking down the path, but I see discouragement in the
faces of the crew.
As I return to the parking area, I witness a more pleasing scene.
Seated on the ground and leaning on a boat trailer, one of our
team captains is reading an essay by Thomas Mann for preceptorial. Nothing, not even Occoquan, is more important than
Thomas Mann.
This is the way intercollegiate athletics ought to be. ♦
Co LL E c E. St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�{THE
{TH E
TUTORS}
T U TOR S }
FAITH, FRIENDSHIP,
AND TEACHING
Brother Robert Smith u sail devoted to SL John:SBY ROBIN WEISS (SFG186)
rother Robert Smith (HA90) traces
his personal history-spanning
90 years-from his childhood near
the Golden Gate Bridge, through
adolescence in wine country, to
adulthood when, as a Christian
Brother, be stoked the fires of his
passion for educational reform: first
at St. Mary's College in Moraga,
Calif., then at St. John's in Annapolis.
"I just learned from a woman we both knew that Jacob
Klein told her that once I came here I would never leave.
This has turned out to be true," he says, reflecting on his
appointment to St. John's in 1972.
For Brother Robert, the Program is perpetually new.
"Each person is asking their own questions; that is the
heart of education," he contends. "There's a new conversation every time. You see the repeated miracle, each year, of
how students develop, with a renewal of life each time."
To generations of Johnnies, Brother Robert has served
"as practical advisor, career counselor, spiritual guide,
almost Any mentor-like role," says tutor emeritus Elliott
Zuckerman (HA95) . No one has been so unswervingly
devoted to the college, to the seminar in particular, and,
personally, to [former Annapolis dean] Jacob Klein."
During his graduate school years in D.C., tutor Michael
Dink (A75) enjoyed Brother Robert's standing offer of a
guest room in his Market Street apartment. "At breakfast,"
Dink recalls, " I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation, regardless of what kind of night I had.. ..These
talks helped me to keep a sane perspective on the sometimes trying world of graduate school."
{ THE
Devotion to faith, friendship, and the practice of teaching underlie Brother Rober t's story, which began in a "very
interesting part of Oakland," home to a flood of German
refugees fleeing the persecution of Catholics under Otto
von Bismarck, chancellor of the German Empire.
"At the beginning of the Prussian takeover, Bismarck
made life very difficult in Germany. A lot of these people,
specifically Franciscans, were aware of California because
that order had missions there." Brother Robert explains
how these "highly educated people started a parish in what
was then the edge of Oakland. Now it's deep in Oakland but
the parish is still there."
He remembers orchards near his grammar school, where
German nuns taught using methods "in advance of
Catholic schools anywhere."
"I benefited from that. I grew up in that parish and that
sch ool, and I'm very grateful. It was far-seeing, a wider outlook," he says. At a Christian Brothers high school in
Berkeley, he met the brothers and liked them. "I wanted to
do what they were doing-so I joined them."
In the fall of 1930, while a novice, he picked grapes
and was p art of the group who moved the Christian
Brothers Winery to their 400 acres in Napa Valley. During
Prohibition, because it was legal to sell alcohol for religious
pur poses, the ,v:inerywas allowed to stay open.
"As recently as 15 years ago, over half the brandy in this
country was our brandy," he recalls. Today, with their winery closed, the Brothers keep a small hospital on this land
high in the hills above Napa, but rent the remaining acres to
Stone Winery.
Founded in France in 1680, the Christian Brothers (an
order of teachers who are not priests) spoke to the needs
Co LL EGE. St. John's College. Spring 2005
)
FOR 33 YEARS, BROTHER ROBERT HAS REMAINED
"UNSWERVINGLY DEVOTED" TO ST. J OH N'S.
{ TH E
Co LL E GI!. St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
�I6
I7
{THE TUTORS}
{THE T UTORS}
"THE BROTHER"
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH, SAY
of the working poor as these
HIS FORMER STUDENTS, "MADE
people made the transition
HIMSELF THE BEST OF FRIENDS."
from rural to city life.
According to Brother
we were at war and various
Robert, the founder saw "a
people said: 'You'll eventucrying need to provide free
ally get into this war, and it
education," which allowed
won't be a good thing for
for "the very beginning of
you.' " Instead, in 1943 he
the possibility oflower-class
went to Laval University, in
people rising." In this time
Quebec, where he studied
of Louis the XIV, with finanphilosophy.
cial support from nobility,
He doesn't regret that choice. " It
the Brothers initiated radically new
turns out they were right." He
schools, which were French rather
remembers studying with people
than Latin-based. These schools
who had started at Louvain and
were for shoemakers, shipbuilders,
had to leave. " Laval was extremely
and other working people who deslively. There were refugees from
perately needed the basics of math,
BROTHER ROBERT SMITH , TUTOR
other European countries," creatreading, and writing to survive in
ing an exciting mix of teachers and
the cities. The movement started in
students.
Rheims and quickly spread to Paris,
After returning to St. Mary's as a teacher, Brother Robert
Avignon, and Rome.
continued work on his dissertation: liberal arts from the
Almost two centuries later, when Pope Pius IX asked
point of view of St. Thomas Aquinas, completed and pubBrothers from France to serve in California, they were
lished in 1947. A grant allowed him to spend the following
reluctant to go. " In effect, the Pope gave a polite order to
summer at Edinburgh University. "I studied, amongst
get us there, and we've been there ever since," Brother
other things, Hume," he admits, laughing. " He's not my
Robert says. "We had to do things we didn't do in France,"
favorite philosopher, but he came from that university. So I
such as teaching Latin and Greek to a more affluent populahad a good taste of him there."
tion, that oflawyers, doctors, and priests. "We had to scrape
In 1953, after a year in Rome, he was back at St. Mary's
around and find teachers who were competent," he says.
teaching large lecture classes. "We already had seminars,
Thus arose St. Mary's College in 1863, which the
but these lecture classes were the usual ones. At St. Mary's,
Brothers took over in 1869 and run to this day. After attendwe always had our eye on new needs and new ways of doing
ing St. Mary's as an undergraduate, Brother Robert taught
things, and that connects ,vith St. John's."
in a Sacramento high school for a number of years, a
Innovation at St. Mary's had much to do with a layman
requirement of his order.
teaching there, James L. Haggerty, who was acquainted
He recounts that, when he joined the order, there
with the original committee who went to the University
were ten thousand French Brothers as opposed to three
of Chicago in pursuit of "the ideal form of education."
thousand non-French. He'd grown to love French and, for
Brother Robert tells how the partial successes at Chicago,
graduate work, wanted to attend Louvain, in Belgium, "but
"You see the repeated miracle.,
each yea0 cfhow
students develop. . "
{ THE
Co LL E c
E .
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
Annapolis tutor Howard Zeiderman worked with Brother
Robert in many environments. "The most memorable
ti me I spent with Robert was when he accompanied me to
participate in a Touchstones program we had in prison.
He and I and six others joined 12 inmates for a go-minute
seminar. That day the men had selected a text in Touchstones, a selection by St. Theresa of Avila, on prayer."
Brother Robert didn't wear his collar and was quicl for
the beginning part of the conversation. But after about
five minuLes, Zciderman recalls, Brother Robert began
to talk about forgiveness. "The men were transfixed.
None moved when the warning bells sounded, and Lhe
guards finally came LO move them along to their lunch,"
Zeiderman says. "As we left, they referred to him as
brother-a title of friendship. However as the months
passed, each time I came into prison, they asked about
Robert and referred to him as Brother Smith. Finally they
simply began to ask after 'the Brother,' a phrase no one
had ever heard them use before. Ile simply, even when
looking like the resl of us, became BroLher Robert." ♦
such as changing the undergraduate
structure
but
preserving departments, didn't satisfy Scott Buchanan and
others working with him. So,
at St. John's in Annapolis,
"We started anew here, eradicating traditional departments
and transforming the lecture
system to education through
conversation.
At St. Mary's, Haggerty
introduced changes, as far as
he could, such as reading original sources and implementing the seminar. " He talked to all of us about the wonderful
thing that was going on at St. John's. We sent people to
St. John's to look at it," Brother Robert remembers. "We
became closer to St. John's."
In the fall ofx956, St. Mary's received a grant to explore
possibilities for educational reform. Haggerty, initially
responsible, became ill. "Somebody had to run it, so I was
put in charge all the sudden," says Brother Robert. "All I
knew was St. John's. By that time, I had visited a number
of times."
Visits were sweeter due to Raymond Wilburn, a former
St. John's dean, who befriended Brother Robert while
Wilburn was stationed at a naval pre-flight school, located
on the campus at St. Mary's during the war. Wilburn wrote
letters for Brother Robert "to be nicely treated" during
his visits.
He recalls one trip in particular, when he attended a
seminar taught by Jacob Klein. " I was overwhelmed by it,
so I made a point of getting to know him. We became
friends and we remained friends until he died."
While in charge of the new project at St. Mary's, Brother
Robert called on Klein, Richard Scofield, and others for
help. He describes "bold projects," such as bringing in people from outside St. Mary's to examine each senior on his
essay. " I would not do that again. I was matching important
{T
H E
Co L
L E
people, sometimes, with very
ordinary students. I thought
every student should have the
same chance."
He spent his sabbatical
year of 1964 in Venice studying Rabelais. "Rabelais
despised the system under
which he was educated and
decided to get free of it. I've
read him, cover to cover,
many times." After Brother
Robert returned to the states,
Klein invited him to give a lecture.
" I enjoyed it," he says. "I think the students did, too. I
was more rambunctious than I would be now." He admits to
quoting Rabelais "in all kinds of unseemly ways that I
wouldn't do now... "
But after lecture, " Klein told me I would probably be
invited to teach here."
And he was. Students of his first class, a junior seminar in
1966-67, made him an honorary member. He corresponds
with some of them to this day.
" By committing himself as a teacher to thinking together
with his students about what matters to them, Brother
Robert has made himself the best of friends," says Steve
Werlin (A85). " It has also led him to surprising places. He
can speak well of Aristotle, Montaigne, and Baudelaire, but
also about the Talking Heads." Now a teacher himself,
Werlin relies on Brother Robert's advice: "Start where the
students are."
For the remainder of the 1960s, Brother Robert returned
to his duties at St. Mary's. " I had to put the new project in
good enough shape" before getting permission to transfer.
But when the time was ripe for Klein's prediction to come
true, Brother Robert telephoned Klein, asking, " Does
it make any difference to St. John's if I come this year
or next?"
" It makes a difference to me," Klein replied. ♦
c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
}
�I8
{ON
{ON NIETZSCHE}
Ig
N I ETZSCHE}
"Ourfavorite author.s are .simply
those we cannot escape. "
JOHN VERDI, TUTOR
NIETZSCHE 'S
FAVORITE WRIT ERS
BY JOHN VERDI
t is probably true that all of us
ought to read more books by
those authors with whom we
deeply disagree , because only
they have the power to force us
to rethink our comfortable
ideas. Most of us, however, do not do so,
but instead gravitate to those authors in
whose books we recognize our own
thoughts expressed more fully and convincingly, or so we would like to think. In
any event Nietzsche cautions us against
reading any author "of whom it is apparent that he wanted to produce a book,"
but urges us to read " only those whose
thoughts unintentionally became a
book." (The Wanderer and His Shadow ,
I2I) Perhaps we should trust no idea at all
{T n
E
that comes to us while we are reading; as
Nietzsche says, "only ideas won by walking have anyvalue." (Twilight ofthe Idols,
I, 34)
Still, Nietzsche himself read widely,
and while we may not always find his interpretations of his predecessors accurate or
fair, he certainly did h ave his favorite
writers, those in whom he heard echoes of
his own insights and struggles, or who
represented to him types of their age, distillations of the thought around them, or
who entered the great conversation with a
destructive impulse, in an attempt to
refashion thought after their own image.
Our favorite authors are simply those we
cannot escape, because they are too close
to us, for better or worse. Our favorites
Co LL E c E. St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
READING NIETZSCHE'S FAVORITES GIVES US MORE INSIGHT INTO A
PUZZLING AUTHOR, SAYS TUTOR JOHN VERDI.
{T
tt
s Co LL s c £.St.John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{O N NIE T ZSC H E }
{ON N I ETZSCHE}
2.0
reveal aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain
undetected, and so it can be valuable to reflect on them. For
a similar reason we might better understand what Nietzsche
means to us-what Nietzsche ought to mean to us-by asking
who the writers were that he could not leave behind. Nietzsche's pantheon of favorites is large, and I have chosen only
a few and not necessarily those who exerted the most
influence on him. In making this selection I am, to be sure,
revealing a favoritism of my own.
HERACLITUS
In the fragments of Heraclitus Nietzsche found a man who
was willing to live without the metaphysical comfort given
by belief in things that persistently endure. 0wqmjJuLorraorcavra peL, ouoev µevu: Everything changes, nothing
remains steadfast. Nietzsche says that around Heraclitus he
culture that after Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, becomes "pale
and ungraspable," even "immoral." (Daybreak, 103)
Nietzsche's praise ofThucydidcs makes me wonder if, in the
famous dialogue between the Melians and the Athenians
over the fate ofMclos, the historian even means for us to ask
whether it is the one or the other who are right. Might the
moral question be exactly the one Thucydides wants not to
raise? As if to suggest this, Nietzsche asks a rhetorical
question: " Does one reproach Thucydides for the words
he put into the mouths of the Athenian ambassadors when
they negotiated with the Melians on the question of destruction or submission?" (Will to Power, 42.9) The Athenians
argue from power, yet don't we find their words compelling,
if not decisive?
P LATO
felt "altogether warm and better than anywhere else. The
Nietzsche could never escape Plato. His relationship with
affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the
decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying "Yes" to
opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being-all this is clearly more
closely related to me than anything else to date." (Ecce
Homo, IV, 3) Throughout his life Nietzsche considered himself a disciple of Heraclitus. While St. John's does not try to
inculcate this reverence in its freshmen, we do ask them to
translate many of his fragments in the language tutorial.
Their depth and power, contained in such brief, aphoristic compass, invariably proves a remarkable springboard for
reflection on the depth and power of all language.
him and with Socrates often reads like a rocky love affair. On
the one hand he praises, saying: " One can conceive philosophers as those who make the most extreme efforts to test
how far man could elevate himself-Plato especially" ( Will to
Power, 973) and "What is needed above all is an absolute
skepticism toward all inherited concepts (of the kind that
one philosopher perhaps possessed-Plato, of course-for
he taught the reverse)." ( Will to Power, 409) On the other
hand he considers what has derived from Plato to be a sickness. "My cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides. Thucydides, and perhaps the Principe of Machiavelli,
are related to me closely by their unconditional will not to
deceive themselves and not to see reason in reality."
(Twilight of the Idols, V, 2.) Nietzsche praises Plato as "the
most beautiful growth of antiquity," but one who invented
"the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors
so far... the pure spirit and the good as such." (Beyond Good
and Evil, 2) Nietzsche also complains that "since Plato
philosophy has been dominated by morality." {Will to
Power, 412.) Philosophy has lost the ability to blur the
boundary between good and evil, in the way that Nietzsche
believes Thucydides could do naturally, to the extent even
of denying that morality has any role to play in our understanding of human actions. Plato and Socrates represent for
Nietzsche the triumph ofreason and dialectic over intuition
and instinct. Nietzsche, however, struggles to make clear
that "one does not make men better when one represents to
them that virtue is demonstrable and asks for reasons."
T HUCYD IDES
T hucydides is another program author Nietzsche considered a favorite, because Thucydides "takes the most
comprehensive and impartial delight in all that is typical in
men and events and believes that to each type there pertains
a quantum of good sense: this he seeks to discover." (Daybreak, 168) While this reason for his love of Thucydides
might seem at odds with his praise for individuality and
transcendence, and his beckoning to the " Overman,"
themes that pervade his later work, still Nietzsche often
wonders "what might yet be made of man" as a species
(Beyond Good and Evil, n8), andhow"the type 'man'" can
be enhanced. (Beyond Good and Evil, 2.57) He believes that
in Thucydides we see the "last glorious flower" of " that
culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world," a
{ TH E
Co LL e c; E . St. John 's College . Spring 2005
)
(Will to Power, 441), which
is what he thinks Plato and
Socrates do. If our favorite
writers ought to be the ones
that do us the most good,
then perhaps we ought
to include Plato in our list
of Nietzsche's favorites,
though Plato did not give
him the sort of comfort we
often seek in our favorite
authors. But Nietzsche
rarely sought comfort.
2.I
NIETZSCHE RARELY SOUGHT
COMFORT IN THE WORKS HE READ.
Nietzsche thought that
honesty was the one virtue
left to "free spirits," among
whom he counted himself.
"So few writers are honest
that one ought really to
mistrust
anyone
who
writes." (Schopenhauer as
Educator, 2,) In Montaigne,
however, he found the most ~
honest of writers. Mon- 8
taigne's willingness to
explore his own character and the prejudices with which he
himself reads and writes is what impresses and stimulates
Nietzsche most. "Since getting to know this freest and
mightiest of souls, I at least have come to feel what he felt
about Plutarch: 'as soon as I glance at him I grow a leg or a
wing.' " (Ibid.) Montaigne's honesty also infuses what Nietzsche considers his other admirable quality: "a cheerfulness
that really cheers ...with certainty and simplicity, courage
and strength ... as a victor...for there is cheerfulness only
when there is victory." (Ibid.) Montaigne hides nothing and
because he is deeply interested in the world as it is and as it
has been reflected in great books, he serves for Nietzsche as
a kind of Thucydides of the soul.
them both, and for this Nietzsche loves him. " He has
taught me such an infinite
amount-the only logical
Christian." (Letter to Georg
Brandes) At the age of 16
Pascal wrnte a treatise on
conic sections, a text that
marks the beginning of his
very fruitful work in science
and mathematics, and which
students at St. John's read as
sophomores. T hen at the
age of 31 he experienced a
conversion and devoted the
rest of his short life to
religious matters and to
introspection . Nietzsche
consider s him "the most
instructive victim of Christianity." (Ecce Homo, II, 3)
According to Nietzsche,
Pascal carries Christianity to its logical conclusion, "selfcontempt and self-abuse" ( Will to Power, #2,52,), a condition
in which "everything is sin, even our virtues." ( Will to
Power, #786) In such a condition reason, too, is corrupt and
faith is needed for every kind of kno,ving. Furthermore, in
his writing Pascal seems to share some of the honesty that
for Nietzsche characterizes Montaigne. "One should not
conceal ...how our thoughts have come to us. The profoundest and least exhausted books will probably always
have something of the aphoristic and unexpected character
of Pascal's Pensees." (Will to Power, #42.4) Both writers tell
us not only what they think, but how they came to think so,
which can be enormously supportive for those of us who
struggle simply to try to think a few good thoughts.
PASCAL
H EIN RI CH H EINE
Nietzsche sees personified in Pascal the conflict between
science and faith. While Nietzsche attacks both, Pascal.felt
Heinrich H eine was a German poet, cnuc, and writer
of Jewish heritage who converted to Protestanti sm for
MONTAIGNE
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BEYOND THE BOOKS
practical reasons. Nietzsche admired his work immensely
throughout his life, and wrote of him: " T he highest conception of the lyric poet was given me by Heinrich Heine . ... He
possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine
perfection ....And how he employs German! It will one day
be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of
the German language." (Ecce Homo, III, 4) In Heine can
perhaps be found the seeds of two of Nietzsche's most
famous pronouncements, the death of God and the eternal
return of the same. In The History ofReligion and Philosophy in Germany, H eine writes: "Do you hear the little bell
ring? Kneel down. They are bringing the sacraments to a
dying god." (Book II) And in his Last Poems and Thoughts,
we find this: " However long a time may pass, according to
the eternal laws governing the combinations of this eternal
play of repetition, all meet, attract, repulse, kiss, and
corrupt each other again." (We also find the eternal return
suggested by another poet Nietzsche admired, Friedrich
Holderlin, in his unfinished play, The Death ofEmpedocles.
Empedocles speaks: "Go, and fear nothing. Everything
recurs./ And what's to come already is complete.")
R ALPH WALD O E MERSON
Perhaps the writer Nietzsche held dearest from early in life
to late, and the one he returned to again and again, is an
American, Ralph Waldo Emerson . Nietzsche read Emerson
(in German translation) while a student at Schulpforta, and
after he lost his much-annotated copy of Emerson's Essays
some years later, he soon replaced it. While in the end the
differences between the two men may be greater than their
similarities, there is no question that Nietzsche found much
to admire in Emerson's views of nature and history, of
the role of genius in human culture, and of the paradoxical
character of good and evil. The first edition of The Gay
Science quotes Emerson's essay " History" in an epigraph.
"To the poet and sage, all things are friendly and hallowed,
all experiences profitable, all days holy, all men divine."
What Nietzsche finds in Emerson is a thinker who, like
Heraclitus, sees the natural world as shot through with
impermanence. "There are no fixtures in nature. The
universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of
degrees." (Circles) He finds a man who recognizes that
"man .. .is that middle point, whereof every thing may be
affirmed and denied with equal reason." (Spiritual Laws)
H e finds a writer who acknowledges that "we do not see
{ TH E
directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of
correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are,
or of computing the amount of their errors." (Experience)
Nietzsche also discovered in Emerson someone who was
willing to say: " I would gladly be moral ... but I have set
my heart on honesty." (Experience) In general Emerson's
skeptical attitude toward custom and conventionality is
thoroughly Nietzschean. Of both thinkers one might say (as
Nietzsche does say of Schopenhauer by citing Emerson):
" Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this
planet. Then all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is
safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of science but
its flank may be turned tomorrow; there is not any literary
reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that
may not be revised and condemned." (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator; Emerson, Circles)
A N EC L ECTI C LI ST
While I promised only to give my favorites of Nietzsche's
favorites, I ought also to mention some of the other writers
Nietzsche admired, though his attitude toward most was
ambivalent. The list is eclectic. There are the great aphorists: La Rochefoucauld, Lichtenberg, Chamfort, Leopardi.
There are the German giants: Kant, Goethe, Hegel,
Schopenhauer. There is Spinoza, the "purest sage," who
because he denied free will, teleology, and the moral world
order, also stands "beyond good and evil." There are the
Eastern influences, especially Buddhism, which Nietzsche
came to know largely through his reading of Schopenhauer,
and Zoroastrianism, founded by the Persian, Zoroaster, or
Zarathustra. (Could Emerson's description of Zarathustra in
Character have influenced Nietzsche's development of his
version of the character?) And then there is Dostoevsky.
Nietzsche considered his discovery of Dostoevsky in 1887 to
have been "one of the most beautiful strokes of fortune
in [his] life." (Twilight of the Idols, IX, 45) I wonder what
twentieth-century writers Nietzsche would have esteemed,
but then I realize that hardly one has not been affected by
him to some degree. Would not the literature of the last
century be to Nietzsche a mirror in which the reflected
image, while perhaps distorted, would nonetheless be a
familiar one? ♦
John Verdi is a tutor in Annapolis.
Co LL E c E . St. John's College . Spring 2005
)
Revisiting Nietzsche in Sils-Maria
BY JENNIFER A. DONNELLY,
A96
- - - • he rituals of opening questions,
seminar and don
rags vanish after
graduation from
St. John's. But the
night the bells of
McDowell Hall
tolled my class's
submission of our senior essays, an
aphorism by Nietzsche, on whom I had
written my essay, seemed co ring out like
an opening question to the rest of our
lives. " What good is a book," he asks in
The Gay Science, "that does not even
carry us beyond all books?"
As is often the case with Nietzsche,
the formulation is enigmatic: we know
that the man who articulated it was an
avid reader, a prolific writer and a professional philologist, and we notice that the
format used to question the value of
books is, well, a book. But for us,
students of the "great books" program,
the teasing becomes almost a taunt.
What good are these books to which we devote ourselves for four
years? And what does it mean to be carried beyond them?
After seven years of being nagged by these questions, I made
a journey to what could be considered their source: the Nietzsche
Haus in Sils-Maria, the remote village in southeastern Switzerland's Engadine valley where the philosopher spent several
summers and produced some of his most notorious works.
Despite having poured my heart into my senior essay on Beyond
Good and Evil, I had not pursued further studies on Nietzsche or
in philosophy. On that first visit, however, I lovingly toted my
careworn copy of that book, its marginalia ranging from smiley
faces to question marks to "Yes!"
The house in which Nietzsche used to board now shelters a
small museum, library, and archive that present elements of his
life and ideas, as well as some aspects of the remarkably rich
literary and artistic history of the region (which drew authors
{T
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THE VIEW FROM JENNIFER DONNELLY'S ROOM IN THE NIETZSCHE HAUS,
WHERE THE PHILOSOPHER STAYED REGULARLY IN THE I88os.
from Rainer Maria Rilke and Hermann Hesse to Anne Frank
and Pablo Neruda). When co-curator Mirella Carbone mentioned
that a few rooms are allocated to artists, scholars, and writers, I
wondered whether the Engacline's reputed "champagne air" had
gone to my head. The prospect of unbroken space and time for
reflection stretched out wide and inviting like the glacier-topped
pea.ks, temperamental skies, and glassy lakes that inspired
Nietzsche's idea of"eternal return."
So return I did. One year later, the toy-like RhiitischeBahn train
was carrying me up an unending succession of misty switchbacks,
steep terrain that Nietzsche somehow covered in a horse-drawn
carriage. This stay in Sils-Maria was to last a month. Although I
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
�{ALUMNI VOICE S }
{A LUMNI VOICES}
was eager to reread Nietzsche
in the environment that had
so powerfully inspired him, it
wasn't my intention to make
a pilgrimage to his ghost.
Rather, having recently completed a master's thesis on art
museums in Paris, which for
five years had been home, I
was mainly seeking distance
from everyday life in order to
WTite and think about something else, such as where my
next steps might lead.
My room in the Nietzsche
Haus turned out to share one
wall with that of its more
famous resident. It also bore
the type of Spartan furnishings upon which he had
insisted-little more tha n a
single bed and a WTiting
desk-although I had the
benefit of electric lamps and
a sink instead of gas lanterns
and a washstand. I soon
determined that my ends
were best achieved not by sitting at that desk, but by setting out into
the mountains framed by the window
above it. As I climbed the trails, one
panorama wouJd unfold into the next
and high-altitude valleys would come
into view; peaks previously hidden
would rise up, compelling me to continue moving, often over snow fields
and glacier streams, in hopes of glimpsing whatever Jay beyond.
Just so, fresh perspectives on my life
down in the "flatlands" (to borrow
Thomas Mann's phrase from The Magic
Mountain , set in nearby Davos) suggested themselves. The insights sometimes evaporated, but other times they
REVISTING N I ETZSCHE SENT
DONNELLY BACK TO P ARIS WITH
NEW APPRECIATION FOR THE
PROGRAM IN GENERAL.
l
evolved into realizations about
how I had wound up where I
was and resolutions about how
to proceed forward. The sound
of the German verb for "to
hike," wandern, aptly captured this dual motion of
rambling across slopes and
" .. the texu on the Program
create a sort ofmental
landscape through which
we Johnnies-and all those
who reai debat~ and write
aboutthegreatbookshave earned thepassport
to wander. "
J ENNIFER A. DONNELLY, A96
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meandering through thoughts.
Furthermore, so resounding
is the echo between Nietzsche's writings and the Engadine landscape that the hiking
paths-wanderwege-turned
out to give as direct an access
to his ideas as did the wellstocked shelves of the Nietzsche Haus library and the
Biblioteca Engiadinaisa. Trail
guidebooks quote the philosopher on the scenery (he
described a lake as " milkgreen ") and designate his favorite trails
(rarely too steep, because of his fragile
health). At the tip of the Chaste peninsula jutting into the serene lake of Sils,
where he dreamed of living in "a sort of
ideal dog-kennel," a boulder is engraved
with a passage from Zaratlwstra: "AJl joy
longs for eternity...."
On one hike, the words fit the scenery
with an exactitude that was downright
eerie. Takjng a break, listening to cowbells ringing through the valley, I
opened On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. "Consider
the herd before you," the book begins,
t
I
launching a discourse on the dangers of historical memory by
describing a herd of grazing cattle.
Off the trails, the magnetic gcist of the Nietzsche Haus and
its centrality in the Engadinc's cultural and intellectual life
encouraged the conversations that, as all Johnnies know, round
out reading and reflection. I met a Scottish professor from
the University of
Hawaii writing the
preface to his translation of Zarathustra, a
Ziirich screenwriter,
and a Swiss-German
novelist. Even the
library seemed to hum
with the whispers of
the absent authors of
weighty dissertations
sent from all corners
of the globe like travelogues from the territory of Nietzsche's
thought.
The image of those
heavily footnoted theses loomed in my
mind when co-curator
Joachim Jung asked me to explain my link to the house's
namesake. As I rendered into clumsy German a 20-year-old's
interpretation of Nietzsche's "philosophy of the future," I wondered whether my unmediated reading of that book was merely a
straying into a thick forest, and my senior essay for St. John's a
valiant but inexpert attempt to plot my haphazard steps back
through it.
I reread that essay, after descending to the flatlands of Paris, for
the first time since handing it in that cold January night in
Annapolis. Since my focus had been morality, religion, and dogmatism, the ending surprised me: "Art," I had concluded, "is
beyond good and evil. ..." Though I would no longer dare to
defend this proclamation as earnestly as I might have at my senior
oral, I like to consider it a portend to my later experiences of
studying and working in the field of the visual arts.
This perspective on my study of Nietzsche at St John's leads me
back to my opening question: what is the value of studying the
program books? Writing a senior essay on Nietzsche certainly did
{ THE
not make me an authority on his philosophy. But reading his work
in the Engadine years later reminded me that the texts on
the program create a sort of mental landscape through
which we Johnnies-and all those who read, debate, and write
about the great books- have earned the passport to wander. The
books (as well as the musical scores, the scientific papers,
and the mathematical
texts) can inform our
decisions, spark new
ideas, and color our
experiences long after
our formal studies
end. And we need not
become experts on
a book or its author
in order to be instructcd, entertained or
even annoyed, any
more than we need be
Alpinists to hike up a
mountain.
As for defining my
next steps, walking
through Nietzsche's
mountains convinced
THE MOUNTAINS T HAT I NSPIR ED NI ETZSCH E
me that reorienting
GAVE DONNELLY N EW INSIGHTS INTO THE
oneself
is a process
PHILOSOPHER'S IDEAS.
that never ends. "Der
Weg ist das Ziel, " ran
an ad in a paper I read over morning coffee at the Nietzsche Haus:
the path is the goal. The real challenge is not to stick to a narrow
trail but to keep climbing with all the strength in our limbs and
hearts in search of the most breathtakjng views. ♦
Notes: Nietzsche's description ofthe lake as "milk-green" isfound
in Eugen E. Hiisler's Engadin, Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 2001.
His favorite trails are described in Paul Raabe 's Spaziergange
<lurch Nietzsches Sils-Maria, Arche Verlag AC, Zurich-Hamburg,
1994. Nietzsche's description of his retreat as a "sort ofideal dogkennel" is mentioned in a letter to Carl von Gersdorff, 28 June
1883, cited in The Nietzsche Haus in Sils-Maria, by Peter Andre
Bloch, Calanda Verlag, Eng. trans. Albi &Julia Rosenthal.
Co LL E c E. John's College. Spring 2005 l
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{C R OQ UE T}
{CROQUET}
NAVY PREVAILS!
Cold and Rain Fatl to Dampen Spirits
at the 23rdAnnual Croquet Match
BY ROSEMARY HARTY
eforc the match started, the
only thing to grumble about
was the weather: unseasonably
cold, windy, patches of rainthe kind of weather that calls
for abandoning the picture hat
and sun dress in favor of a down coat and
jeans. Nevertheless, the crowd of alumni,
students, and townies approached 500. They
enjoyed the party under umbrellas, tents,
and blankets.
But then, the unthinkable! With the score
tied 2-z, a Navy team edged past Chris Mules
(Ao6) and Tristan Evans-Wilcnt (Ao7) after
the Johnnies tried a risk)' move and ended
up "staked out" by their opponents.
In hockey, it was the equivalent of sitting
in a penalty box while the winning team
scores on a power play. Jn basketball, it was
like watching a three-pointer swish through
the net with your best player on the bench
after fouling out.
It was a well-played, competitive, exciting
croquet match-just what the two teams who
took the field were hoping for. The Mids
emerged from Woodward Hall to Queen's
"Under Pressure." The theme from
The A-Team played as the Johnnies came
out dressed like characters from the movie
Napoleon Dynamite, in badly stenciled
white t-shirts that said "Vote for Pedro,"
short-shorts, and geeky headbands.
The two teams were tied for most of the
afternoon, with St. John's clinching one of
the final games when senior Cara Lammey
hit a winning stroke.
"I knew it was now or never ifl was going
to play a match-I also know they needed a
token girl," she explained.
Imperial Wicket Nick Whittier (Ao5)
had nothing but praise for the Navy team.
Having beaten Navy in an intercollegiate
competition a few short weeks before,
Whittier wasn't expecting
an upset.
" Some of their best players had an ei,.traordinary
game, and some of ours had
one or two off shots-and
that's all it takes," he says.
"I think the Navy team is
excellent."
Overall, St John's has won
r8 matches co Navy's five
wins. The last time Navy
upset the Johnnies was in
zoor. Navy's captain, Adam
Todd, declared himself
"stoked" over the win.
{ T H E
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St. John's College . Spring 2005
MIDSHIPMEN ADAM TODD (LEFT) AND
ALEX PLUMER GREET NICK WHITTIER (Ao5,
RIGHT) AND JOHN GERARD (Aos) FOR A
FIERCE BATTLE.
"It was a great match," he said. "The
Johnnies came out and played an excelJent
game."
The Navy team of Dustin Wood (next
year's captain) and Eric Watt succeeded in
"staking out" the Johnnies by hitting a rover
ball, a move the Johnnies had just tried
unsuccessfully. That forced the Johnnies to
sit out two rounds, allowing Navy the win.
Navy fans rushed the field in triumph.
Did the Navy team put in extra practice
this year? "We practiced less because of the
bad weather," he said.
A few days after the match, Todd was
unable to say where the Mids planned to
display the Annapolis Cup, the thrift-store
trophy awarded the winners of the match.
" I didn't even know there was a 'cup,'"
he said. "I had always thought it was just
a myth." ♦
}
SANTA FE CHILI
SAVES THE DAY
Alumni traveled from as far away as
California to attend the an nual Croquet
match against the Naval Academy, and
their spirits were only slightly wilted by
gloomy weather and ignominious defeat.
The weather didn't stop a group of Santa
Fe alumni from pulling off a pre-Homecoming reunion, or deter a grou p of young
Annapolis alumni from pitching a te nt
and enjoying a banquet of potato-leek
soup, vichyssoise, and salmon.
Tanya Hadlock-Piltz (Ao5) flew in from
Los Angeles to see her friends- all of
whom were dressed to the nines. "This is
homecoming for us," said Hadlock-Piltz.
The Santa Fe reunion class of zooo
used the annual party to stage a preHomecoming gathering in Annapolis.
Many alumni live on the Ease Coast, so
croquet gave them an impetus to get
together in case they can't make it back
to Santa Fe this summer. T he group
consisted ofr4 alumni from the class. and
even though their plans were somewhat
compromised by uncooperative weather,
they had a great time catching up, said
Alex.is Brown (SFoo, EC03).
The group rented lodgings in the
historic district and had Horseman's
Haven green chili, "a much-loved and
missed commodity from Santa Fe,"
shipped to the Annapolis alumni office
before the event. Their plan was to invite
any Santa Fe alumni and current students
(a group of about 20 made the trip) whom
they met during the croquet match to a
Saturday-evening barbeque. When the
match was postponed to Sunday because
of threatening weather, they partied
amongst themselves, ate more salsa, and
joined the Waltz party later that night.
All alumni got to sample the hoc stuff on
Sunday at the alumni tent.
"Evcr)one was very happy to have had
this opportunity to get back together,"
says Brown. "Some ofus hadn't seen each
other in six years.''
Amina Khattak (SFGI95) flew in from
Norther 1 California, bringing Annika, 3,
and CyT,1s, r4 months, to introduce them
to John me croquet. "I try to come out
every year, but this is their first match,"
she said. ♦
CLOCICWISE: ANNAPOLIS '04 GRADS IN THEIR
FINERY; MEGHAN HUGHES
(SFoo)
AND HER
BEAU, PATRICK; LAURENT MERCERON
(Ao8);
(Ao7).
AND JUDITH TORGERSON, MOM OF ERIC
PHOTOS BY MATTHEW BARRICK
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�28
OPEN SECRETS/I NWARD P ROSPECTS:
REFLECTIONS ON WORLD AND SOUL
By Eva Brann
Paul Dry Books, 2.004
n her latest book, Annapolis tutor
Eva Brann has collected
observations and aphorisms
written over more than
30 years. Open Secrets/
Inward Prospects divides
into two sorts: observations about
our external world well known to
all but not always openly told, and
sightings of internal vistas and
omens, wherein Miss Brann looks
at herself as a sample soul.
In the preface to this beautiful
volume that fits perfectly in one
hand, Miss Brann describes her
manner of composition: "I wrote
these thoughts down on about two
thousand sheets, two to three
thoughts per paper, and I kept
them in some used manila
envelopes, the earliest of which
bore a postmark ofI972."
Most of the sheets lacked a
notation of when and where they
were written, she added. "Whether
about 5,000 articulated notion per
person per lifetime is about average
or over or below I cannot tell; they
certainly stacked up high."
Miss Braun's instructions for
approaching the book are these:
"Open anywhere and if it irks you,
try another page. This book can be
long or short-As You Like It."
Any Johnnie who has been lucky enough
to enjoy a conversation ,vith Miss Brannin seminar or outside of it-will understand
why this little book is a gem. For those
who haven't had the pleasure, these interesting thoughts-a sample of which are
provided below-wiJJ offer a glimpse of the
experience.
Some people's chatter, God bless them, is
actually self-expression, but for others it's
self-sacrifice on the altar of sociability to
join in, and betokens not so much interest
in what is being said as interest in the mere
expression of interest, that is, the desire to
show civility-and to look each other over.
Sometimes it gets screamingly boring, and
then you catch a glimpse of one of these
others feeling likewise-and start a real
conversation.
{BIBLIOF I LE}
{BIBLI OF ILE }
maunder on for a long, long time. When
the last judgment is ready to be made we'll
be Jong gone.
To love your country is to love it openeyedly, sometimes for its flaws, sometimes
with its flaws, and most often in spite
of its flaws. It's not so different from
personal love.
The heroism of maintenance is severely
underrated. It is the resistance to human
and natural eno·opy- that cosmic
downward trend (which Lucretius
symbolized in the fundamental fall
of his atoms), that tendency toward
deterioration and featureless
homogeneity that will obtain if the
world is left alone. (In Washington
State I Ltscd to see a dentists' billboard saying "Ifyou ignore your
teeth they' ll go away.") But it isn't
only nattue and humanity in its
natural course that needs to be kept
going against time's grain; we also
need a counterinsurgency against
mindless novelty. Between entropy
and innovation-that's where my
heroes a.re at work.
"Vacation" is a sad word, the
vacancy of time after the press of
business. "Leisure" is a lovely
word, the freedom of time for longbreathed projects.
No one has sufficiently said what a
feeling is. I tis pathos, something
passably suffered, affect. Yet it is
also motion, being moved out of
oneself, emotion. No more do we
know what pleasure is, especially
psychic pleasure: It seems to be the
aboriginal accompaniment, not so
much reaction as concurrent commentbut every analytic description covertly
involves the word "pleasant." All the
definitions I've read of feeling or pleasure
are either diversionary or circular: Even
my trusty Heritage Dictionary can do no
better than to lead me from feeling to
affect and from affect to feeling. And the
definitions given in books circumvent
saying what passions are by telling how
they arise and what they're good for-as if
origin and effect were what is wanted.
Miss BRANN's OPEN SECRETS COVERS TOPICS
INCLUDING MUSIC , INTIMACY, MEMORY, AND
IMAGINATION.
Many of us feel ourselves to be living on
the cusp of time: Great questions are about
to be settled: Is nature infinitely transformable, or does she collapse if her own
Jaws are used too intrusively against her?
Is human nature indefinitely malleable or
does it ttrrn monso·ous when pushed too
far? How much virtuality can the human
imagination absorb before it loses its own
actuality?, etc. I don't think anything wi II
be concluded in the short run: Both nature
and humans will accommodate to more
impositions than anyone imagined and
rebel at less provocation than one would
have thought, and that way things will
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"Questioning" this or that is an act of
covert aggression. Question-asking is an
act of persistent love.
)
P ROFILES IN TERROR: T HE GUIDE
TO M IDDLE EAST TERRORIST
O RGANIZATIONS
By Aaron Mannes (AGI97)
Rowman & Littlefield, 2004
incc global terrorism emerged
in the 2.ISt century, it has
spawned dozens of shadowy
groups with elusive leaders.
Aaron Mannes (AGI97) sheds
light on 20 terrorist organizations in the Middle East and the regional
groups that are affiliated ·with them in his
book Pro.files in Terror: The Guide to
Middle East Terrorist Organizations.
Mannes, who wrote his handbook for
journalists, researchers, and those who
work in counterterrorism, describes
aspects of each terrorist group, including
leadership, ideology, financial support,
targets and tactics, and areas of operation.
"The modern terrorist phenomenon
really started when the age of media began.
It is political theater," says Mannes, who is
careful to distinguish modern terrorism
from other insurgencies throughout
history. "Terrorists play off the nature of
our modern, wired society and use mass
media to spread fear and their agendas.
Terrorists legitimize violence. They say the
society is so awful that violence as a whole
is appropriate."
When beginning his research,
Mannes was fascinated by what he
calls "asymmetrical warfare," and
says, "First-world countries such as
the United States are unbeatable,
but terrorism has emerged as part
of a vast equalizing process." Looking to the future , Mannes predicts
more terrorism. "There are different evolutions - the terrorism that
achieves a goal, such as the Madrid
train bombings that effectively got
Spain to pull out of Iraq. And there
arc the catastrophes that wreak
major havoc, violence as a goal in
and of itself."
Mannes was inspired by his tutors
at St. John's to pursue his interest
in public policy and writing. "All
my tutors were terrific," says
Mannes, "but Leo Raditsa (now
deceased) helped me even after my
graduation from St. John's. He
taught me about the importance of
freedom, liberty, and governments
that protect and preserve that.
Governments that undermine
this are viscious."
Mannes served as director ofresearch
at the Middle East Media Institute in
Washington, D.C., from r998 until 200I.
He currently works at the University of
Maryland's "Mind Lab," where he models
terrorist networks. ♦
During times of public stress, like war,
certain mental illnesses and suicides are
said to decrease. That's surely not an
argument for the redemptive power of war
but an illumination of the human condition
in peace: Normalcy is the most stringent
tester of sou.ls.
A PUBLICATION
OF JINSA PRESS
AARON MANNES' HANDBOOK DETAILS
20 TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE
MIDDLE EAST.
"Open anywhere and
ifit irks you~
try another page. "
Contrary motions: The young at their best
are intensely introspective but all their
dreams are for the world. The old a.re in
fact rooted in that world but their meditations turn inward. -Like passing ships,
they send tenders across and board briefly,
bringing news and victuals. Less fancifully,
coming and going, we've got things to tell
each other.
EvA BRANN, TUTOR
Childlike and childish: the ever-young at
heart and the willfully infantile. The first
are quirky but lovable, the second just
irritating.
Some looking into themselves come to the
limit and say, "I am the ground." Others
see no end and say, "It hath no bottom."
But perhaps you shouldn't search in the
soul but through the soul.
"A friend is another self." If so, why
bother? One ofmc is enough. No, it's just
because souls are never transparent to each
other v-.rithout remainder that they see each
other at all. Mutual opacity keeps us two,
together but unmerged.
We humans a.re temporally rooted in the
world, atemporally in the soul. Good
communities mediate these two realms
of the secular and the transcendent: Their
members live their daily life mindful of
something beyond.
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005
Do my colleagues see themselves, mutatis
mutandis, as I see my sclf?-a being of
dubious gravity, urgently perfectionist
about small things and dilatory about great
ones, an everlasting amateur frivolously
suspicious of expertise, kept callow by the
luck of life that has preserved me from
chronic tragedy, extensively introspective
in leisure rested from responsibility-an
old woman with an unconscionably
young soul? ♦
)
�{ALUMNI
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
PROFILE}
THE HosT OF "MARKETPLACE" TUNES IN
David Brown (AGJ95) takes a liberal arts approach to business news
BY PATRICIA DEMPSEY
mid Brown (AGl95)
says the long oral
tradition in radio is
still vibrant and vital.
"There's more time on
radio to engage in the
art of this tradition, and there's more
room for nuance."
Brown is speaking from the Frank
Stanton Studios in Los Angeles, Calif.,
just a few hours before he goes on the
air to engage millions oflistcncrs with
his agile conversation as host of
"Marketplace," public radio's national
series about business and life. There's a
rustle of paper as an assistant slips an
urgent message under Brown's nose,
but right now his focus is elsewhere.
His meandering Southern speech downshifts, and Brown, who once customized
and sold Harley-Davidson motorcycles,
relaxes into a conversation about
road trips.
"When I think of favorite road trips,
one that stands out was the road trip of
the summer of '95, from Boston to
Annapolis to attend the Graduate
Institute," says Brown. "I was working
in Boston for Monitor Radio at the time;
Monitor is the public radio broadcast
produced by the Christian Science
Monitor newspaper. They offered me this
gig to host and I said, 'Hey, I'm happy to
do this hosting gig but this program at
St. John's is important to me.' "Brown
asked for the summer off to finish his
Graduate Institute studies. " I t is so vivid
in my mind, when I was finally crossing
the border into Maryland and feeling so
happy to be heading south of the MasonDixon again. And Annapolis as a place
has such resonance for me."
A native of Georgia, Brown lived in
Annapolis in the early 1990s when he
worked as Washington, D.C., bureau
chief and chief national correspondent
for Monitor Radio and Monitor
Television. In one of those happy
I
expand your perspective, you can see that
each point of view in fact is true."
"I also think quite often of
Tocqueville's Democracy in America,"
says Brown, who owns three copies of
Tocqueville's book and keeps one on
his bedside table. "When I look at the
domestic scene, so many of his
observations hold true today, such
as the religiosity of Americans, the
role race plays in the American
consciousness, the tension between
rugged individualism and civic duty, so
many of the things that made Americans
peculiar creatures in Tocqueville's time
continue to define us on the world stage
today." Of his three editions of the book,
Brown says "one is a precious, dog-eared
volume with my class notes, another is an
inexpensive paperback I can pack up and
take along as a casual read, and the third
is a library edition.' "
Brown offers another insight that he
culled from reading the great books.
"I think about art and science, how
radio brings these together and how at
St. John's, the concept of art versus
science, and the melding of the two, was
part of the curriculum discussion ," says
Brown. "Here in radio, you have storytelling-the art of telling-a-story-part of
radio-and then you also engage in the
science, the journalism, getting the
facts right. This is what we do here at
'Marketplace.' I t's a liberal arts approach
to looking at business," says Brown.
"At 'Marketplace' we have what we call
'front-yard stories' that touch a deep
chord, such as an issue of democracy and
justice. What's at stake when there's a
courthouse shooting in Atlanta? We look
at the social phenomena, the context
shaping the backdrop for the events that
are shaping the business news. Then
there are 'backyard stories' on topics like
bond prices that are not big on curb
appeal, but need to be included. Then we
mix it up-this is what makes us unique."
''.[fyoufree your.se!f
expandyourper.spective~
you can .see that each
pointefview in/act is
true. "
DAVID BROWN (AC195)
accidents that make a journey memorable,
when Brown was living in Annapolis he
stumbled upon St. John's, a perfect match
for his appetite for intellectual discovery.
" I was searching for something to keep
me mentally charged and stimulated,"
says Brown.
At a political function in Annapolis,
Brown met a recent GI grad. "He was
enthusiastic, incandescent even, about
his experience at St. John's. So I met
with [graduate admissions coordinator]
Miriam Callahan-Hean. At that time
the Graduate Institute was housed in
Mellon Hall and we walked around and
I remember thinking, 'This is extraordinary-there are conversations about
conversations going on here.' "
The ideas Brown encountered in his
conversations at St. John's find a forum
in his distinctive radio show today. "I ate
it up. I loved it. The reading, the being
exposed to ideas I wouldn't have exposed
myself to if left to my own devices," says
Brown. "I'm not a math person, but not a
week goes by that I don't think about
Lobachevsk.--y and Euclid and parallels.
You can see it, visualize it-the parallel
lines into infinity. I remember thinking,
'This is not possible. How can these
mutually exclusive ideas-Euclid's classic
definition of parallels and Lobachevsky's
vision oflines infinitely approaching
each other-both be true?' "says Brown.
"This opened a way of seeing things for
me in journalism. If you free yourself,
{ THE
Co LL EC & •Sc.John's College, Spring 2005
}
Brown recalls the skepticism
surrounding "Marketplace," when it was
a new show. "In 1989 there was this
cheeky upstart business program that
everyone said would fail," says Brown.
By 2000 Brov-m, who had just graduated
from Washington and Lee Law School,
was recruited to be senior producer of
American Public Media's "Marketplace,"
and du ring his tenure the show garnered
several awards, including the prestigious
Peabody Award for excellence in journalism. By 2003, Brown was host, a
challenge he relishes. "There is something that happens every day between
10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. when we go on the
air. I'm no CPA, so I have to synthesize
this, present it in an interesting,
engaging way co tell it to our listeners.
There's a pressure, but it's a good
pressure, and you spin out the story.
It's exciting, challenging, thrilling," says
Brown. "When I go home, I get calls from
friends and they say, 'That made so much
sense. I'm so glad you put it that way.'
That makes it meaningful for me-that I
got through, communicated. St. John's
prepared me; all the underlying conversations prepared me."
Brown is another hour closer to going
on the air, but he has one more story
about the GI. " Of the four GI segments,
I put off math until the last semester.
Lobachevsky, the logic, I wrestled with it.
One day I was having coffee with [tutor
': ..he [Mr. Kutler) knew
I was .straining. He told
m~ 'You 'fl.see this. You 'fl
get it. Give it time. ' "
DAVID BROWN (Ac195)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John's College. Spring 2005)
DAVID BROWN WORKED BRIEFLY IN TELEVISION,
BUT PREFERS RADIO. "IT'S BEEN SAID 'THE
PICTURES ARE BETTER IN RADIO' ANO IT'S
TRUE."
emeritus] Mr. Kutler. I think he knew I
was straining. He told me, 'You'll see
this. You'll get it. Give it time.' He was
right. It was a loving, reassuring gesture.
He could see I was looking for an intellectually challenging experience. 'You
might really love law school,' he said to
me.'' He knew I was interested in talking
about ideas. He knew I was wondering,
'Where do I go from here?'"
Fortunately Brown ended up at
"Marketplace," adding intellectual spice
and artful conversation to evening
commutes. ♦
�{ALUMNI
1935
"1 'm very proud to have been a
II
graduate ofSJC," writes
MELVILLE L. B1SGY£R. "I'm a
very old man now (91+) and as I
look back, those four years are
among the highlights. The
memories of my fellow
students, the wonderful profs,
the staff, the old buildings, my
dorm-Pinkney Hall-the bell
rope running through a classroom atop McDowelJ, the
library, the gym, the proms.
Is the Sugar Bowl still in town?
The connict with Hopkins in
'35, the front campus, the old
Liberty Tree, which I know is
now gone. The All-American
lacrosse teams-all part of a
wonderful memory. A biologyzoology class of four students
and two profs-wow-other
memories we won't discuss, but
think about with many a
chuck.le. All the best."
s. WOODMAN is "still
practicing law here in upstate
New York and traveling quite a
bit to Jtaly and Australia in my
spare time. Would like to hear
from any classmates who are
still around."
R ICJWlD
Ii
I
{ A LU M N I
NOTES}
Q UITE IMMERSED
(class of1955) received the
"Conductor of the Year, 2004" award from the
Illinois Council ofOrchcstras. He is now
conductor laureate of the New Philharmonic
and Du Page Opera. He has accepted the
_ ~ _ ~ artistic directorship of the opera program at
North Park University in Chicago and is quite immersed in
composilion and painting. ♦
-
-
-
-
AROLD B AUER
-
1950
1943
has been
thinking about the college,
particularly about the reading
list, and especially about
Proust. " It seems to me," he
writes, "that since my time, the
Program has improved with the
two years of Greek and French,
the greater emphasis on writing
and laboratories without
Humphreys' sha1..-y floors. The
one disimprovcmcnt has been
the dropping of Proust from the
fourth year. Swann's Way,
although a part of a larger
whole, is a complete work in
itself. The author of a recent
article in The Atlantic Monthly
found it incredible that one can
graduate from Harvard without
reading Shakespeare or Proust.
How can a 'great books' program not include Proust? It is
time to include him again."
M ILTON P ERLMAN
"My wifeof 56 years, Phyllis,
(we were married two weeks
after graduation under the Liberty Tree) and I will be moving
to a Quaker-sponsored continuing-care retirement community,
Kendal on Hudson, on July
first," wTites P ETER D AVIES. "It
is close to New York and
Riverdale, so we will continue
to enjoy theater, concerts, dining, and city life, and friends in
Riverdale. We stayed with that
Republican, GERRY H OXBY
(class of1947); argued into the
night last August while in Ohio
campaigning for John Kerry!
I'm still representing the
United Nations at Safer World
(a British think tank) and working on a conference in July on
preventing armed conllict."
:
The eldest son of O SCAR L OUIS
L ORD, Lance W. Lord, an Air
Force four-star general, has
been made Commander of Air
Force Space Command.
1944
LINDSAY CLENDANIEL writes,
"I am happy to represent other
alumni who, like myself, didn't
graduate from St. John's but
from other institutions, yet
consider St. John's my alma
mater!"
{ TH E
Co
LL£
c
E.
A tribute from Eo LYNCH: "My
belief is that St. John's is one of
the finest educational houses in
the country. I did not graduate-I completed two full years
and did not return. I came to
St. John's from high school.
My classmates were men who
had attended other colleges,
gone to the war and returned to
St. John's to be enlightened and
truly free. I was intimidated by
their vast knowledge of the
world and the things in it.
Anyway, I guess I wasn't the
brightest bulb in the lamp,
nor the most energetic. I love
St. John's, and I always will.
I will never regret my time
there."
R OBERT G. HAZO
FREDERICK P. D AVIS: "We 3-Ds
in the low desert of Southern
California (son David, wife
Rita, and self) still plug along
respectively at a Riverside Nursing Home (broken, infected
legs), Rita on full-time oi,..-ygen,
and I without a driver's
license-revoked! But church
volunteers have supplied us
with food and rides to church,
etc., since this cruel blow of the
OMV on November 2.4, 2.004.
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
is the most reliable and
strongest expression of real
love."
JAMES and AMY (class of1959)
JOBES are both retired. An1y
serves as an occasional supply
priest in Massachusetts. They
have three grandchildren now,
in Massachusetts: Amanda, 4; in
Georgia: Elijah, 2., and Sophia,
1 month.
is still writing
political books entitled Minorily
Rufe. "It goes slowly but well.
Publishing articles in the metropolitan newspaper here and in
the Washington Report on the
Middle East on doings in the
Middle East, especially Iraq and
Lebanon. Gave my annual
lecture on "Love" on Valentine's
Day to undergraduates. Attendance was good. Women outnumbered men by 2, or 3 to 1,
surpTising since maternal love
our regular lives and welcoming
friends in these more spacious
quarters."
M ARYFRANCES McCtrrCHAN is
retired from the National Park
Service. She lives in Annapolis,
is learning to play the flute, and
has three grandchildren. She's
also looking forward to her class
reunion in 2.008.
"I have finally found the Great
Hall ofSJC here in Santa Fe and
attended a wonderful concert by
Joan Zucker last week. Now that
I know where it is, my wife and I
will attend more concerts,"
writes MICHAEL TRUSTY.
1 959
H ARVEY and MARY (class of
1958) GOLDSTEIN are
planning ahead. "Members of
the class ofr959 are already
starting to plan for our 50th
reunion-log on to the class of
'59 Web page on the alumni site
for the continuing story."
1960
USAF, is
enjoying retirement. "Marie
and I are thoroughly enjoying
life in the slow lane. After many
years of high-stress/high-travel
jobs, having time to read, soak
in the spa, shoot pool, frequent
auction and estate sales, and
generally do whatever I want,
whenever I want, is wonderful!
The only downside is the great
blue heron that eat our fish, and
the deer that eat our shrubbery.
COL. JOHN J. LANE,
1953
1949
I
Lately "Seniors Helping
Seniors" (for a price) have
taken Rita and me to see doctors, get haircuts, etc., throughout this valley. But at 60 miles,
Riverside is out of their range.
It's over three years since we've
seen David. Rita and I shall
never forget SJC, where we met
at St. Anne's Church. I obtained
a classic liberal education."
CECILY SHARP-WHITEHILL
writes: "Along with the
seminars my colleagues and I
conduct several times a year for
senior executives of professional service firms on the topic
of management of PSFS (this is
a five-day course and qualifies
as education, not just training),
I continue to consult for firms
on the topic of business
communications, both spoken
and written. Having wearied of
relatively long, gray winters
and snow shoveling, I moved
permanently to Osprey, Fla.,
immediately south of Sarasota.
It's delightful here."
1966
"On December 10, we moved
into our new house designed
by us and our architect,"
reports J ULIA B USSER OU PREY.
"It has been an exciting, but
all-consuming project, and we
now look forward to resuming
{ THE
33
N O TES }
1968
ELIZABETH A. D OBBS (A) writes:
"I have an article coming out in
the Chaucer Review on an allusion to Ovid's Narcissus and
Echo story in The Franklin's
Tale. It's called 'Re-sounding
Echo.'"
G. K EENS (SF) is a professor of Pediatrics, Physiology,
and Biophysics at the Keck
School of Medicine of the University of Southern California
and a member of the Division of
Pediatric Pulmonology at Children's Hospital, Los Ange les. "I
was recently appointed Director
of Pediatric Subspccialty Fellowship Education at Children's
Hospital," he writes. "I have
crested a year-long course in
scholarship skills (research
methodology and proficiency in
teaching), which emphasizes
small-group interaction rather
than reliance on lectures. I conduct research in pediatric respiratory disorders and am investigating an innovative hypothesis
that the cerebellum has a majoT
role in control of breathing."
THOMAS
CllARL£S B . WATSON (A) writes:
"Anya Watson graduates from
Connecticut College this year
and has been awarded the Rolex
North American Our World
Undergraduate Scholarship
for 2.005, presented at the
Explorers Club in New York
City in April 2.005. It provides a
year's funding for undersea
research (and a Rolcx watch).
Her undergraduate major was
marine biology with a minor in
Russian and European studies
(age 2.1). Ivan most recently
reports from Kyrgyzstan for
NPR after recent travel to Iraq,
Beirut, Turkey, Iran, and other
newsworthy locations (age 28).
Michael, an avid scuba and
windsurfing enthusiast, is
working on Martha's Vineyard.
Other alumni are encouraged to
look us up in Connecticut and
Martha's Vineyard."
"Hello to H ENRY CONSTANflNE
(A) and his beautiful wife,
Christine," writes STEVE H ANFr
(A). "Thanks for the iospirational message-see you at the
reunion."
LIVING HISTORY
-
(SF74) continues to direct the Public H istoTy
program at New Mexico State University. His book
,_ ON H UNNER
Inventing Los Alamos: The Growth ofan Alomic
Communily came out last fall from the University of
Oklahoma Press. His program at NMSU has published
:_ •
books on Santa Fe and Las Cruces and conducts living
._. history events from the Spanish Colonial and Great
Depression era. Mary Ellen, his wife, is finishing a graduate
degree in nursing, and t heir son Harley is a first-year student at
Seattle University. ♦
Co LL E c £.St.John's College. Spring ~005 }
i
�34
{ALUMNI
NOTES}
{ALUMNI
SUSHEILA H ORWITZ (SF)
writes: "I'm still alive and still a
member of Madonna House.
I spent the last seven years in a
small city in eastern Russia.
I loved the people there and
would love to retllrn."
LIFE AT THE ALTERNATIVE
Julia Goldberg (SF91) and the Santa Fe Reporter keep an eye on the city
BY ROSEMARY
HARTY
here's a great deal of hard
work, long hours, and modest compensation attached to
the work Julia Goldberg
(SF91) docs as editor of
The Reporter, Santa Fe's
alternative weekly newspaper. So on a
recent winter's night, she was at peace
with relaxing her journalistic ethics just a
little to accept a free ticket to a sold-out
lecture by linguist Noam Chomsky.
Goldberg has always loved language,
and there's no better outlet for someone
in Jove with words than the satisfying
grind of putting out a weekly newspaper,
especially one as feisty and in-your-face as
The Reporter.
A life-size stand-up ofBuffy the Vampire
Slayer, adorned with Goldberg's press
pusses, overlooks the piles of newspapers,
files, and other materials stacked all
around Goldberg's office. After five years
as editor, she's had time to get comfortable in her job. Her path to The Reporter
was a simple choice.
" I wanted to WTite, and I didn't want to
leave Santa Fe," she explains.
Like many Johnnies, the Philadelphiaarea native was guided to St. John's by a
high school teacher who recognized
Goldberg's love of books. She loved the
language in the Program, especially
ancient Greek; however, " junior math
almost killed me," she says, shuddering at
the memory. She became a music assistant
and delved into journalism by editing
The Moon, the student newspaper, during
her junior and senior years.
Established in 1974, The Reporter is one
of the oldest independent weeklies in the
country. Given away free in boxes all over
town, it has a circulation of 21,000 and a
core of dedicated readers. "We have a
great relationship with Santa Fe, and we're
really considered a part of the city," she
says. On the other hand, Goldberg adds,
"we're always struggling to break even."
As editor Goldberg oversees two
reporters, a full-time art director, a
part-time assistant director, and a dozen
or so freelancers. 'Iwo other Johnnies
currently work for the paper: Andy Dudzik
(SFGI92) is the publisher; Jonanna
Widner (SFGloo) is assistant editor.
Many Johnnies have been on staff or
freelanced for the paper. Even when Goldberg's reporters are young and green, they
share a passion for breaking news stories
and digging imo complicated issues.
"I'm working with really smart people,"
she says. "We've broken a lot of stories in
the last year and a half."
"The Short Life of Jimmy Villanueva"
revealed that the county jail violated the
---
constitutional rights of prisoners by
failing to treat their health problems.
"Soldier's Heart" probed the psychological problems soldiers faced on their return
from Iraq. And a shocking lack of services
for autistic children in New Mexico was
exposed in "The Lost Ones." Goldberg
has won numerous awards from the New
Mexico Press Association and the National
Federation of Press Women. She created
and directed the Hip-Hop Voter Project,
designed co inspire young Hispanic
residents in New Mexico to vote.
The R eporter provides an importanL
alternative to the local daily, the Santa Fe
continued on p. 3 5
organic garlic farming. Visitors
are welcome at s Dodge Corner,
New Vineyard, Maine."
(SF)
has a short story in the online
journal VerbSap: http://verbsap.com/2oo5mar/sarai.html.
"Just got home from a threeweek wine and nature trip to
New Zealand," says LELIA
STRAW (A). "Love the Kiwis and
their homeland. We were there
over the U.S. election though,
and they're all mystified by the
outcome."
35
WORK AND PLAY
ARCO ACOSTA (A82) sends a hello to all his
1 973
(SF) reports:
"My daughter INDIA C L ARK
(SF01) and Challem Clark are
now living in Budapest,
Hungary, in a beautiful
apartment right over Vaci
Utaca, the main pedestrian
street. They are having a
blast and perhaps will stay
longer than the original
six-month plan."
INDIA WILL IAMS
SARAH (GANCIIER) SARAI
NOTE S }
1 974
and R ANDY P ENDLETON
(both SF) have news: "We are
delighted to announce the
marriage of our son, W ALKER
(A99), to R.Ac n EL V EDAA (SF99)
in April."
M AllTHA
"unique and talented" classmates: "I have
many great memories of our college years and
hope the best for you all and your families.
I continue to examine my life daily. Work is:
legal, filmmaking, public school teaching
K-12; Play/other: WTiting, guitar, music, recording, chess,
basketball. Personal: divorced. Peace and Prosperity to you allplease call when you're on the West Coast."♦
(A) directs, supervises, and interprets MRI
examinations of the brain and
body at 30 sites in 12 states.
"I teach and lecture on brain
development, brain imaging,
and brain pathology at
Georgetown University and
elsewhere. My four wonderful
children never cease to amaze,
amuse, confound, and inspire
me as they display the intricacies of brain development to
me, up close and personal."
JOIIN REES
1 975
C YNTIIIA Swiss (A) has been
elected to president of the
Maryland/DC Chapter of the
American String Teachers
Association. "I have organized
statewide certification exams
for young string players," she
writes. "I also schedule
workshops on Suzuki String
Teaching Technique. Our
chapter published a newsletter
called Stringendo, and I have
contributed several articles."
I RVINC WILLIAMS (A) is
"moving to the country estateroom for a pony-in July to start
continuedfromp. 34
New Mexican, says Goldberg. "They
cover what's happening; we try to be
progressive," she explains. Part of the
paper's job is to provide a guide to
enjoying Santa Fe, with special sections
on restaurants, art galleries, recreation,
and just living in the city.
The process of putting out a weekly
paper starts each Wednesday morning,
with a critique of the current paper.
Goldberg and her staff brainstorm new
story ideas, identify a cover story, and
plan what they need to report on in the
coming weeks. On Thursday, they start
working on a preliminary layout, Sunday
Goldberg spends editing the cover story,
and Monday and Tuesday are "slam days,"
as the final stories come in for editing,
headlines, and fact-checking. Tuesday
THE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN
HER COMMUNITY KEEPS J ULIA GOLDBERG AT
THE REPORTER.
{THE
Co LL E c E. St. John 's College. Spring2005}
night is the press run, and on Wednesday
it starts all over again.
The Johnnies and other reporters who
work for Goldberg tend to get good training at The Reporter. But they soon head
off to New York or other cities where their
editorial skills can earn them a better
salary. After interning at the Phi/,adelphia
City Paper, the New Mexican and The
Reporter, Goldberg earned her master's
degree at the University of New Mexico.
"J:re 've broken a lot of
.stories in the last year
andaha!f"
JULIA GoLOBERC (SF9:r)
{ THE
Co LL E c
E.
St. John 's College. Spring 2005 }
She acquired valuable experience at one
of her first jobs, the Rio Grande Sun,
where she covered county government,
politics, and schools. It gave her a sense
that an aggressive local paper is an
important tool of democracy.
"You need to ask questions, and you
need to listen carefully-a lot like what we
do at St. John's."
In between deadlines, Goldberg manages to get time off to enjoy the beautiful
city she's living i n. She enjoyed a recent
Community Seminar at St. John's and
vows to get up the hill more often to enjoy
campus events.
But even with the long hours, it's hard
for her to imagine giving up the work she
does at The Reporter. There's always
another story to tell. " I can't say the
perfect opportunity isn't out there, but
right now, I can't imagine a better job." ♦
�{AL U M NI
NOTE S }
{ALUMN I
37
NOT ES }
I
Beginning April I, MICHAEL
will be serving as the
regional minister for Northwest
Connecticut, responsible
for oversight of about 50
United Cht1rch of Christ
congregations.
C IBA (A)
MAUYELLEN LAWRENCE (SF)
has finished her subspecialty
training in infectious diseases
at the University of New Mexico
and is practicing medicine in
Santa Fe. She writes, "It may be
that, at last, 1 have completed
my formal medical training!"
" I've been eagerly scanning the
class notes for 21 years now, so
thought it was about time I
made a contribution," writes
} ACK A RMSTRONG (SF). I live in
West Chester, Penn., of all
places, with my wife, Ca1·men,
and kids Michael (16) and Emily
(8). I am happier than I ever
expected or deserved. I'm
printing ballots for a living,
and writing stories for my soul.
I also have a theatre with
Carmen, the Philadelphia
Shakespeare Festival, which
is the 800-pound gorilla of
hobbies. l miss you all."
ANNE M CCLARD (SF) reports
1980
" I am delighted to let everyone
know that I am now the proud
mother of Emily Sierra," writes
Gmu GLOVEU (SF). "She came
to live with me from Memphis,
Tenn., and I will be ever grateful to her birth mom for helping
me create a family. Can't wait
for you all to meet her at our
next reunion."
that NOAH MCC LARD
LEDBETTER (SF02) and DAGNY
CHICOINE-STANGL (SF01) were
married in July 2004.
STEVEN T. R EYNOLDS (A) writes:
"Landry Tait Anders Reynolds
joined the gaggle August II,
2004. The family and the
garden continue to thrive."
medical staff on January r,
2005. He will serve as president
for two years. He was previously
the medica 1staff vice president
for two years and has been the
laboratory medical director for
four years. Thia is currently
working with President William
Harvey to build a proton
therapy radiation oncology
center at Hampton University.
She has also recently been
invited to serve on the Board
of Directors for the Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator
Facility, the American Physical
Society Division of Nuclear
Physics Program Committee,
and the Combined Theory and
Experimental Collaboration for
Quantum Thermodynamics.
Nothing but good news from
KATII EIUNE RowE (SF): "I am
still a preacher in the Episcopal
Church and still in a Denver
suburb. I'm still a speech and
language pathologist, and still
in love with my husband, Phil,
and my two ch ildren. I'm also
still glad that I went to
St. John's."
1985
writes,
"I continue to practice law in
Baltimore and am pleased to
announce that I have recently
set out on my own. Having my
own practice has allowed me to
do the cases I want to do, spend
ANNA L. D AVIS (A)
ERIN MCVADON ALBRlGHT (A)
welcomed his first grandson,
Patrick Alexander, into the
world one year ago.
News from BARRY H ELLMAN and
CYNT111A " TwA" KEPPEL (both
A): Barry became president of
Mary Immaculate Hospital
GoozILLA PHASE
STEVEN CRAMER (A) is an
attorney in private practice in
New York City. He lives in
Maplewood, N.J., with his
wife and two daughters, the
youngest adopted from China
in December 2004.
-
-
ife is "good and busy" for A LEX (AGI93) and
ELLERMANN. Alex works in the
national security field, flies C-13os in the Navy
Reserve, and is working toward his second
master's with the Naval War College's Distance
- - - - • Education Program. Vanessa practices Jaw with a
Georgetown firm that specializes in class actions. Son Alex, 5, is
going through a Godzilla phase at the moment, "which is pretty
fun," they write. ♦
V ANESSA (A93)
.J
{ THE
1:
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S1. John's College. Spring 2005
)
more time on volunteering and
pro bono cases, and most
importantly, better balance the
demands of work and family.
My husband, Richard Gordon,
and children, Aaron (IO) and
Rachel (6), and l are all well and
would love to hear from any and
all Johnnies passing through
Baltimore."
TE1uu K. LUCKE'IT (SF) worked
for GE for a long time but left
for Honeywell in 2002. "I lived
in L.A. for one year, but moved
to N.J. a year ago to become
vice president of Business
Planning for HON. I'm hoping
to move out ofN.J. back to
points west as soon as possible,
but time will tell. Beautiful
Carolyn is 12, now and a true joy,
was diagnosed with diabetes in
2001, but we manage. We grew
weary of corporate nomadic life
and bought a piece of Santa Fe
to call our 'home away from
home.' Ping us if you are either
here or there: terri.luckett@
honeywell.com."
is vice
president of operations at a
mid-size software company in
Maine. " It's quite exciting and
very busy," he writes. " I am
happily married to a woman
from Maine who makes me
laugh a great deal. For those of
you who remember my interest
in music, I wrote an orchestral
piece around 1995-96 and went
to the Czech Republic and had
it performed at a workshop for
orchestral composers. It was
really fun. Haven't written a
note since!"
K ENNETH MARTIN (A)
1986
MELISSANETfLESHI P Br-.J',EDICT
(SF) writes: "Since July of 2000
I have been director of finance
at Santa Fe Preparatory School,
released her thu-d album, Live
at Blues Alley. Her Web site is:
www.mclaniemason.com
JOHNNIE FRENCH TESTED
-
ATRICE MCSHANE (SF02) was on her way to Africa
earlier this spring: " I spent the two-and-a-ha lf years
after graduation in Portland, Ore., working at a
Montessori preschool. I got ants in my pants, shifted
direction, and applied to volunteer for the United
....
States Peace Corps. I was accepted and leave for
Burkina Faso, Africa , on March 17' An unusual way to spend
St. Patty's Day, don't you think? I'll be there for over two years,
teaching secondary math to Bw·kinahe high school students.
Let's hope my SJC French rises to the occasion! I am mighty
excited and would be more than willing to discuss the Peace
Corps application process/experience with any prospective
vo lunteers. Or just write to say "hey, you!" patsymcshane@
hotmail.com." ♦
just down the hill on Camino
Cruz Blanca from the Santa Fe
campus."
1989
"After many years in San Francisco, I've been in Denver for a
year, spending much of my time
practicing Tibetan Buddhism,"
writes LARRY SEIDL (A). "I've
been remiss in my alumni
activities, though I saw many
shining faces at reunion
number ro in '96. Twenty is
just around the bend. A warm
general hello to the community
in general, and the class ofr986
and my tutors in particular."
BURKE GURNEY (SFGI ) is
married with two children:
Kyra and Elise, ages 15 and 13.
"I am an assistant professor at
the University ofNcw Mexico in
the Department of Orthopedics,
Rehabilitation, and Physical
Therapy. I teach physiology,
orthopaedic evaluation and
treatment, professional ethics,
and gerontology. I am an avid
traveler, reader, skier, and
parent."
JAN UNDERWOOD (SF) is working
as a Spanish instructor.
AL1ZA S HAPIRO
(SF) was
recently engaged to David
Mandel.
1990
JOHN SELLERS (A) is "married to
Becky Woods and teaching
grades 8-12 math and science,
including chemistry and
physics-challenging."
THE RFV. M'N SLAKEY (SF) is
now priest-in-charge at
St. Matthew's Episcopal Parish
in Ontario, Ore.
is a fuUtime blues artist, writing and
performing original blues-rock
material as lead electric
guitarist and vocalist for the
Melanie Mason Band. She
also performs and records
traditional acoustic blues as a
solo artist. She recently
KEN TuRNBULL (A) writes:
"My wife, Leslie, and Tare both
lawyers in Washington and are
enjoying our seven-month-old
daughter, Fiona."
Co LLB c
E.
'
(SF) and her
husband arc pleased to
announce the birth of their first
child, Emma Lee Ward, born on
January 4, 2005.
J ENNIFER R YCIILI K
1991
is a 2004
winner of the National Poetry
Series award, and her second
book, Starred Wire, will be
published by Coffee House Press.
ANGIE MLINKO (A)
N ICOLE l<ALMANOR LEVY (SF)
writes, " l n August 2004, I gave
birth to our first daughter, Eve
Simone Levy. She's the apple of
our eye! My husband, Rob, and
I moved to the North Shore of
Boston last year, to Swampscott,
which is a small town next to
Salem-the Witch Capital, and
Marblehead-a sailing capital.
A fon destination with some
cultural treats! 1 am working
on a master's in Jewish studies.
Got through Jewish mysticism,
now working on a translation of
portions of the Book of Exodus.
I wish I could go to more
alumni events, it's been great
connecting!"
MELANIE M ASON (A)
{ TH E
Alrnapolis to sec his wife, SARA
ScnROEOlNGER (A92), he is logging lots of frequent-flyer miles
on bt1siness trips to China,
Thailand, and Malaysia.
1993
The commute to work for K u1n
HECKEL (A) got a lot longer in
early September 2004, when he
took a position ,vith Border
Concepts in Charlotte, N.C.
When he is not traveling back to
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
1994
JANIE BOSWORTH (SFGI) and
GEORGE F. BING HAM (SF66)
were married July 3, 2004, at
the Audubon Center in Santa
Fe. Between them, they proudly
share six children and seven
grandchildren-with another
one on the way.
finished
writing his dissertation in May
2004 and spent the summer
backpacking in Montana. " T
hiked across the Bob Marshall
Wilderness once, enjoyed the
experience, and went back for a
second passage," wTites Kroll.
"Walking through the long
eveni ng light of summer in the
northern Rockies is not to be
missed. The bears keep things
interesting, too. Talso spent
numerous days floating the
Bitterroot and Clark Fork
Rivers, drinking beer and
formulating a master plan.
I completed my Ph.D. in
Wildlifo Biology from the
University of Montana in
December 2004 and accepted a
position as a research scientist
with Wcycrhaettser Corporation
in Federal Way, Wash.
I am responsible for habitat
plann ing for the company's
Wester n timberlands, as well as
general wildlife research and
operational support. I would
enjoy hearing from anyone, and
I am anxious to jump-start
ANDREW }. K ROLL (A)
I
I
I
I
�{ALUMNI
NATHAN WILSON
{ALUMNI
PROFILE}
(AGl01) UNVEILS SHROUD MYSTERIES
BY PATRICL\ DEMPSEY
ike many Johnnies,
Nathan Wilson (AGlor)
is unwilling to walk
away from an ino·iguing
question. Five years
ago, Wilson became
fascinated with the origins of the
mysterious Shroud of Turin and began
to wonder how the images ofJesus on
the cloth-believed by some to be
authentic-could have been faked.
Ultimately, with a few simple tools
Wilson demonstrated how a medieval
might have forged the images on the
shroud. His simple experiment showing that glass, paint, and sunlight
could have been used to create a
"reversed" photonegative image
sparked a media frenzy, with Wilson
appearing on shows including ABC's
World News Tonight.
Wilson (profiled in the Summer
2.002 edition of The College for his parodies
of apocalyptic novels) ruminated over two
questions: how do we know the dark image
was imposed on light linen at all? Further,
how could a forger in the Middle Ages
lighten linen without chemicals, paints,
or dyes?
"A negative image can be easily produced using only large pieces of painted
NATHAN WILSON THEORIZES THAT
C H RIS D AVI S and CARMEN
(both SF) write:
"CHARLIE B REW and P AT
BOHAN, it's high time you
stopped reading so much
Kafka!"
H ERIJIIG
SUNLIGHT TRAVELING IN AN ARC OVER
PAINTED CLASS CREATED THE
3-D IMAGE
ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN.
glass," explains Wilson. "In the Middle
Ages, glass was commonly made in large
sizes: six-by-eight feet or even nine-by-five.
It was made in a long cylinder and unrolled
into a sheet as early as the noos, a technique perfected in the 12.oos and r3oos. As
the Shroud is roughly 14 feet in length, two
pieces of glass would be necessary, both at
least six feet long. The image of the front of
alumni activities in the Puget
Sound area. I can be reached at
ajkroll64@hotmail.com."
English, Italian, and Latin, and
where Greek and Sanskrit are
offered as electives.
PATRICK SCANLON (SFGI) will
be resident clirector of School
Year Abroad's Italy campus in
Viterbo, Italy. SYA Viterbo
offers a one-year classics
curriculum for American
juniors and seniors in homestays. He and his wife, Linda,
and their four children return
to the central Italian town
(population 60,000) where
Pat had taught English for two
years previously. Now he'll
oversee a program that requires
GREG WATSON (SF) writes, "l
live in Washington State on a
beautiful island with my dog,
Rusty, and wife, Karen. During
the week I am employed as
assistant harbormaster at a
local marina, and on weekends
I teach sailing in Seattle. So I
am still using my captain's
license. Also, I am getting ready
to embark on a trip to Costa
Rica with Solar Energy International, where we will work with
locals installing renewable
energy power systems."
{ TH E
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the man would be produced beneath
one and the back of the man beneath
the other."
How would the forger create the
three-dimensional shading? "By painting an image on the top side of the
glass," says Wilson. "This leaves a gap
where the sunlight traveling in a 180degrec arc could penetrate at angles
that produce the 3-D shading."
Wilson used white oil paint to create
images on eight different window
panes and placed them over coarse
linen in the sun. The paint blocked the
sunlight from bleaching the darker
cloth, but everything around it was
bleached white. The results, Wilson
believes, point to one possibility for
how the shroud was faked. He detailed his
experiments in an article published in the
journal Books and Culture: "What I have
done is crudely demonstrate that such
an image could easily be produced in a
matter of weeks by wicked men with no
scruples, a little imagination, and a little
more skill." ♦
1 995
JEROME DuFFY (SFGI) is
working as an elementary
school teacher at the Chinese
American International School
in San Francisco.
ALICE BROWN and GREG
HODGES (A) are happy to
announce the birth of their
second child, Silas Wister
Hodges. "We are also pleased
to announce the completion of
Greg's doctoral thesis, "An
Ethnography Study of Lucan's
Bellum Civife," which has
St. John's College. Spring 2005}
arrived after a gestation of
many years and has earned him
a Ph.D. in classics from Ohio
State University. We arc
teaching and in the thralls of
Babydom in the Great White
North, and loving it. Fond
thoughts of all!"
CAMERON GRAHAM (SF) has
moved from South Carolina tO
the Defense Languages School
in Monterey, Calif. "I am a
specialist, and I will most Iikely
be there for a couple of years;•
he writes. "In the army, I
received an award for top
physical program at Fort
Jackson in South Carolina,
and now I am studying Arabic."
D AVID MALLEY
(A) writes:
"T didn't graduate from
St. John's, but my short time
there is a treasured memory.
For that, I am always grateful."
H EATHER (AGI)
my new company and will serve
as my launching pad for my
next year of helicopter flying,"
reports KI RA K. ZIELINSKI (SF).
"Happily, no more tourists. I'll
be flying as a utility pilot, which
means construction and
firefighting all over the western
U.S., just as Pericles would have
done had he not been occupied
with a higher calling. Same
e-mail: Hcrme5@juno.com."
and C HRIS
NOR.DLOII (AGI96) welcomed
Nicholas Nordloh into the
world on Dec. 24, 2004.
(A) and AolUENNE
(JAK0WSKI) RUIJENSTElN (A96)
have lived in the Washington,
D.C., area for five years, the last
three in Frederick, Md.
Adrienne teaches at the
Maryland School for the Deaf,
and Peter commutes to an
In tern et networking job in
Northern Virginia. Their big
news is the appearance on
the scene of Jonah Chester,
by far the littlest Rubenstein
currently extant. Born just
shy of Halloween 2004, Jonah
has made a splash among his
admirers. Blue-eyed and dark of
hair, he is considered by his
father to be "quite handsome."
Two-year-old beagle "Elway" is
said to be " adjusting well" to
the newcomer despite occasional lapses in respect for the
property rights of others.
P ETER
"Did I mention I'm engaged?"
writes APRIL I0AWALTERS (A).
"Getting married October r,
2005, to Travis Hopkins and
J'm keeping my name. Also,
I've been working at MICA as
the writing studio coordinator
almost as long as I attended
SJC!"'
1996
}ILL C111U!,'flNE NIENIIISER
(AGI ) writes: " T was recci:itly
promoted to director of strategy
at Mind and Media, Inc. in
Alexandria, Va. Last Friday I
had my first piano lesson since
1984. Upon leaving the music
store, I slammed my finger in
the car door. So far there is no
appreciable difference in my
playing ability, despite the
swelling! Hah ! "
1997
DAVID CANNELL (EC) dropped a
note from Japan: "Hidcko, the
three boys, and I are in Tokyo
for the next year or two on a
Japan Foundation fellowship,
praying it's enough to see us
thr9ugh the remainder of my
doctoral program (UC Irvine).
My thesis is on Matsuo Basho
and haikai poetry in late seventeenth-century Japan. Meantime, we're just enjoying being
here. The cherry blossoms have
come and gone-in a matter of
days! Can't wait for the next
sumo tournament. Would love
to hear from fellow EC grads
and know what's going on in
their worlds."
"I'm proud to say that I've used
up Las Vegas and am now off co
Tucson, which is the home of
{ THE
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NOTES }
39
"My company, North Star
Games, is starting to pick up
momentum," writes DOMINI C
C1tAPUCHETrF.S (A): "Cluzzle
has won several prestigious
awards as a great family game
and our next game, Trivia
Casino, was picked up by a
larger game company. It looks
likely that both games will be
available at national outlets for
the 2.005 holiday season! If so, I
will finally get a paycheck after
12 months of working for nothing except a dream. WES DONEHOWER bought an apartment in
DuPont Circle so we have been
hanging out a bit recently. Give
us a call if you're in the area
and we'll get together: 202-2536070."
1998
News from ALEXANDRA D .E.
BOOZER (A): "Jam happy to
announce that I was ma rried to
Daniel Giguere ofWindham,
Maine, on September I9, 2.004.
Last year I received my doctorate in clinical psychology from
George Washington Univers ity,
with a specialization in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. We are
currently living in Holmes
Beach, Fla., where I am
working towards obtaining
Florida psychology licensure.
I would love to hear from any
old friends or to link with other
students/alumni with an
interest in practicing
psychology. I can be reached
by e-mail at: alexandra_FL@
hotmail.com."
(SF) is teaching
fifth-grade math. He and his
wife, Sara, are pleased to be
homeschooling their four
ch ildren. "This summer we
will be flying to England, where
we will be learning to build
wooden boats."
D AVID BRADEN
St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
MA'ITH£\V C. JOHNSTON
(SF)
sends greetings to his long-lost
classmates. "After stints as a
teacher, a college admissions
counselor (at SJC of course),
and a theology student, I'm
pleased to report that I'm back
at St. John's in Santa Fe, working alongside the assistant dean
to improve student activities
and services. My wife, A.NNE"ITE
P RA.PASI RI (SF04), and I are
expecting a baby in mid-April
and, ifwe can negotiate home
prices here, plan to stay in SF
forever. Drop me a line if you're
in town or needing the inside
scoop on SJC developments. I
can be reached at 505-424-3292
or mjohnston@sjcsf.edu."
1999
RACHEL VE0AA (SF) and
WALKER P ENOLEOON (A)
were married April 16, 2005,
at St. Mary's College in
Moraga, Calif.
2000
ANNE MCSHANE (A) is finishing
her first year at law school at
NYU. 'Tm spending the
summer at Nebraska's ACLU.
If anybody wants to chat about
going to law school, feel free to
write me at annecarolmcshane@
yahoo.com."
BENJAMIN SHOOK (SF) writes:
" I'm making beautiful furniture with a hint of Danish and
Asian influence. Visit
www.bcnshook.com to see
my work."
DE8EllNJERE } A.NET T 01Ul£Y
(AGI) is in Seoul on a Fulbright
fellowship, studying premodern Korean literature in
�40
{OBITUARIES}
{ALUMNI NOTES}
"A GIFT FOR FRIENDSHIP": REMEMBERING STUART BOYD
preparation for her dissertation
research in the Department of
Comparative literature at Penn
State University.
BY LYNDA MYERS
TuTOR, SANTA Fe
DAVE P ROSPER (SF) moved LO
Oakland and bas a new job. "I
also have a stack ofblack-andwhite Eexlebots comic books; if
anyone wants one. let me know.
Life is pretty sweet."
2002
ALANA and JOEY CHERNTLA
(both SF) had their second little
girl, Rose Isabella, on Feb. 25.
"Our first, Sadie Pearl, will be 2
in a few weeks. Besides enjoying
our intense domesticity, Joey
runs a daycare, and I work in
publishing and tutor homeschoolers in Euclid."
2003
NATE and REBEKA H (NEE
Go·rrtOB) EAGLE (both A) are
serving as Peace Corps
volunteers in Cameroon, West
Africa. They arrived at the end
of September for training in
agroforestry and moved to their
pose, the town of Poli, in
December. Their service will
end in December 2006. You can
view photos and a blog and find
out how to get in touch at
monadology.net.
KYLIE LIEBERMAN and ZEPJ-!Yll
(both SF) planned to be
married April 30, 2005, in Las
Vegas, Nev. See their Web site,
zheartk.com for pictures and
contact information.
R ENNER
2004
ENJOLI COOKE (A) is beginning
her second year as a postbaccalaureate fellow at the
National Institutes of Health.
"I'm beginning the graduate
school application process and
am planning to attend a Ph.D.
program in molecular biology."
RHO DA FRANKLIN (A) and
}All.ED 0 1mz (AGI05) were
married December 18, 2004,
in Annapolis.
LAURA MANION (A) was featured
as a "profile of the month" on
the Web site of the Mississippi
Teacher Corps. The corps is a
two-year program that recruits
recent college graduates to
teach in critical-shortage areas
in the Mississippi Delta, in
exchange for a full scholarship
for a master's in curriculum and
instruction from the University
of Mississippi. Manion teaches
ANNAPOLIS SENIORS COMBINED ENTREPRENEURIAL SP! RIT WITH
ALTRUISM BY CREATING A"WOMEN OF !l.005" CALENDAR TO HELP RAISE
MONEY FOR THEIR CLASS GIFT. THE STUDENTS PLEDGED MONEY TOWARD
PURCHASING LOBACHEVSKY MANUALS POI\ ALL SENIORS NEXT YEAR.
THEY HOPE THEIR GESTURE WILL INSPIRE OTHER CLASSES TO DO SOME·
THING SIMILAR, WITH THE COAL THAT ALL LAB MANUALS CAN BE GIVEN TO
STUDENTS. THESE TASTEFUL CALENDARS (MAY zoo5-MAY 2006) CAN BE
PURCHASED FOR $10 THROUGH THE ADVANCEMENT OFFICE IN ANNAPOLIS:
SEND ACHECK TO ALEXANDRA FOTOS, ADVANCEMENT, P.O. Box 2800,
ANNAPOLIS, MD 21404.
seventh- and eighth-grade
English at a middle school in
Arcola, Miss.
TATIANA HAIUUSON (A) was
married to Rob Harrison on
June 28, 2004.
RYAN R.lSING (A.GI) is attending
the University of Kansas School
of Law, where he hopes to
graduate on their fast track in
two years, rather than three.
He is at work on a novel that he
hopes to be the first in a ninevolume series. ♦
{ TH E C o LL E c E . St. John's College. Spring 2005
}
WHAT'S UP?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you're doing. The next issue
will be published in October;
deadline for the alumni notes
sect.ion is August 15.
Cla;;snotes posted to the college's online community will
also be included in The College.
IN ANNAPOLIS:
The College Magazine
St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 2r404;
roscmary.harty@sjca.edu
IN SANTA FE:
The College .Magazine
St. John's College
u6o Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
When Stuart Boyd retired from the college in
1988, he was presented with a scroll that read:
To Stuart Boyd, Artist, writer, healer ofsouls,
lover ofknowledge, and teacher ofthe Books:
A testimony to lzis contribution ofover 22
years to the intellectual and convivial delights
ofthe College. "He was a man... we shall not
look upon his like again. "
His humanity, wit, common sense, and love
of life were celebrated again at a memorial
held on the Santa Fe campus at the end of
January, a week after he died of a heart attack
at his home near Can1busavie, Scotland.
Mr. Boyd joined the faculty of St. John's in
1966, when the Santa Fe campus was still in
its infancy. In the words of his wife, Nan, "At
St. John's Stuart found his spiritual home."
Before coming to the college Mr. Boyd had
already led a rich and varied life. He was born
on January 3, 1922, in Aberdeen, Scotland.
In his memoir, The Wind.swept Child, he
describes his childhood in Scotland between
the two world wars as a precious, fragile, and
fleeting time.
When World War II interrupted his
graduate work at Aberdeen University,
he volunteered for the Parachute
Regiment and saw active service in
Sicily and North Africa before being
wounded and captured at Arnhem
in the Netherlands in September
1944. (The story of that disastrous
mission is recounted in the book
The Bridge Too Far.) He spent the
remainder of the war in prison
camps near the Polish-German
border.
After the war, Mr. Boyd completed
his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in
clinical psychology, taught at
several universities in the UK and
the United States, and eventually
joined the faculty of New Mexico
Highlands University, where he
became chairman of the Psychology
Department. At Highlands he met
Robert Bunker (then chairman of
the Highlands' English and
philosophy deparonents and now
tutor emeritus of St. John's).
Ralph Swentzell (now also tutor
emeritus) was a student of both and
what the Confucianists would callJen or
benevolence for his fellow man."
Mr. Boyd's intellectual interests spread
quickly as he taught through the Program
and he became a loved and respected tutor.
Mara Robinson (SFGI83), a former member
of the college's Board ofVisitors and
Governors, first met him in a Community
Seminar, later studied with him in the
Graduate Institute, and became a close
friend. "Stuart was a brilliant, inspiring
teacher and a charismatic man whose classes
always overfilled with students cager to
'sit at his feet' and learn," she recalls.
" His knowledgeable and entertaining
leadership won over, not only many students
through the years, but an enormous number
of townspeople as well."
Faculty colleagues remember Mr. Boyd as
something of an iconoclast, as the faculty
meeting min Lites he wrote as faculty secretary
in :r974 show. According to Mr. Swentzell,
" Stuart, although loving the formal, was
always strongly sensitive about tendencies
toward pompous elitism or hypocrisy. He
valued straight, honest talk-preferably
accompanied by wit and eloquence,
both of which he had in abundance." Tutor Jorge Aigla remembers the way Mr. Boyd welcomed
him to the faculty: "Twenty years
ago it was my good fortune to be
paired with Stuart Boyd for my first
freshman seminar-a wonderful way
to be initiated into our educational
venture. I soo n learned with Stuart
to read honestly, carefully, sensitively; to respect the authors, to
laugh with them (I never managed
to laugh at them, as Stuart occasionally did), and to appreciate the
insights and awakening of our
students. His common sense,
wisdom, advice, courage, and sense
of honor were a great h elp to me."
In the early days of the Santa Fe
campus Mr. Boyd's gift for friendship and his capacity for fun were
cohesive forces among the faculty.
recalls a seminar co-led by "these Lwo most
philosophically exciting professors. I think it
had to do with science and religion, or maybe
it was
existentialism. Students talked about Stuart's
frequent exclamations in class whenever
Bunker would hint at the possibility of God's
existence, something to the effect that he
'didn't see any need for Easter Bunnies
running across his systematic reasoning.' "
In 1966, Mr. Boyd and Mr. Swentzell,
encouraged by Bob Bwlker (who had come
to St. John's the year before), joined the
fledgling Santa Fe faculty. Mr. Boyd served
both as a tutor and as campus psychologist.
As Nan Boyd observes, "Stuart always
managed to find time, and the right words,
when someone was in distress or in need of
wisdom. I know there are students without
number who have cause to be grateful to him,
not only for his role as a tutor, but also for
getting them through emotional problems to
graduation in one piece." Ralph Swentzell
adds, "What I most admired in Stuart was his
blunt honesty and genuine humani ty. He had
a great capacity for sympathetic compassion,
continued on nextpage
STUART BOYD WITH FANG IN
DoRNACH, SCOTLAND.
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continuedfromp. 41
According to Torn Harris, tutor emeritus,
"Stuart helped us form such strong bonds..
.we all resonated with his warmth and care for
us. Did we not dance beautifully and wildJy
then! With uncontained energy we danced on
into the night! He always had a wonderful
laugh. I hear it now." Nan Boyd adds, 'Tm
perfectly sure everyone of you remembers
occasions when the room was almost lit-up by
his laugh and general merriment-there was
nothing, absolutely nothing, he enjoyed more
than a gathering of good friends exchanging
stories and making each other laugh."
Mr. Boyd had a distinctive, very Scottish
presence on campus. Many remember his
military bearing-not quite a swagger-when
he arrived at waltz parties in full regimentals.
Even after 2.0 years, he found the bright sun
of New Mexico oppressive and lamented the
chill and clamp of home. Rumor has it that his
favorite philosopher remained fellow Scot
FACULTY M EETING MINUTES,
SANTA FE:
AN EXCERPT
Nov. 21, 1974
Stuart Boyd, Faculty Secretary
Dean Ncidorf, presiding, judging a
quorum to be present, asking for and
receiving, approval of the minutes of the
previous faculty meeting (noting the
objection by Mr. Jones, whose presence
and words had been reported but whose
absence and silence were the facts, ru1d the
correction by Mr. Venable who suggested
that something had been "evoked" from
Mr. Sacks, not "invoked" as reported nor
"provoked" as intended) invited Mr. Steadman to justify his request that a special
faculty meeting be called for Saturday,
November 2.3, a request to which
Mr. Steadman responded with zest.
Mr. Ncidorf then linked this specific
event with a request for Faculty discussion
of the suggestion that Facul ty Meetings not
be held at the time which had been agreed
on and which had become the tradition,
i.e. Thursday Afternoon, but that we tinker
with this arrangement, to find extra time
so that discussions could last even longer.
Drew wondered out loud if time could not
be saved by streamlining our procedures.
Robinson reminded the Faculty that the
AT 72, MR. B OYD DONNED HIS PARATROOPER'S SUIT FOR A JUMP IN THE NETHERLANDS.
David Hume. When Mr. Boyd retired from
the college, he and his wife returned to
raison d'etre for establishing the Thursday
Afternoon Faculty Meeting was to protect
Saturdays, and that to meet on Saturday
morning would see the remorseless,
insidious, and irrevocable engulfment of
all the hours of daylight and sunshine, in
accordance with Parkinson's Law. Dean
Neidorf finally pronounced that the
thought of rescheduling anything seemed
to involve great difficulty and pain, that
tradition must be respected, that he would
call Thursday afternoon Faculty Meetings
at l p.m. instead of1:30 p.m., and that he
would do what he could to streamline the
meeting procedures.
The Dean then asked for comments on
the recent All-College Seminar. There were
enthusiastic responses from some who felt
that it brought together those who would
otherwise not be so brought, with consequent excitements....Robinson, noting
the excitements that some had experienced, wondered if all seminars could not
be of this nature. The Dean paused, then
remaiked that of course such a suggestion
could be countenanced, but that he was
sure in his experience of the Faculty that
even in the event that a majority approved
such an idea, that that same majority
would reject taking any action. There was
some further conversation about seminars
and books, in which was heard the
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43
{OBITU AR I ES }
Scotland and settled in a small village near
the northern coast, cold and rainy enough to
satisfy even him. There he read, gardened,
worked on his memoirs, and painted in
acrylics, something he had begun doing while
at St. John's. In addition to enjoying quiet
activities near their home, the Boyds traveled
extensively and returned several times to
Santa Fe, where he gave lectures on topics
ranging from Shakespeare to T.E. Lawrence.
In 1994, at the age of 72., Mr. Boyd together
with several other survivors of the Arnhem
mission repeated their parachute jump over
the Netherlands to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and to
raise money for the Airborne Forces Charities
of his regiment.
Mr. Boyd voice lingers on for many friends
like Jorge Aigla: "When Stuart retired in
1989, he asked me to take over his office. In
that space, I still sometimes hear him laughing, telling me (and us): 'ALL is well, my boy,
andallSHALLbewcll! '" ♦
predictable, conditioned suggestion that
Pavlov be expunged from the senior
reading list.
Dean Neidorf reported that the
Annapolis Faculty, in response to student
sentiment, was considering whether or not
to abaJ1don the practice of awarding
honors. After a lengthy silence, Harris and
Jones asked qu estions of Dean Neidorf,
wondering ifhe meant the Annapolis
campus of St. John's, and ifhe meant there
was consideration of whether or not to
award honors at graduation, and received
solemn assurances that all was as he had
said. The Dean went on to say that the
graduating class on the other campus had
registered the complaint that the system of
awaiding honors was oppressive and
offensive. Mr. Sacks remarked, somewhat
cryptically, that the oppressed should not
feel oppressed.... The discussion about
honors continued, with considerable time
spent on Descartes aJ1d "warm, effusive
feelings" and other comments which flew
too fast for this reporter to catch either
their significance or their relevance,
terminating in a masterly synthesis of
Greek ru1d Christian worlds by Mr. Long,
who urged us to think of honors as like
some Olympic Garnes to which many were
called but few chosen ... ♦
MICH AEL C. S LAKEY, C LASS OF 1985
Michael C. Slakey, Annapolis class ofI985,
died of cancer on January 30, 2.005, in
Lannion, Brittany, a region of western
France. He was 42..
Michael met his wife, Victoire Devaud
Slakcy, a French citizen, in Washington,
D.C., and they spent most of their married
life in France. Michael had a full life as a
painter and musician, and as an organic
farmer especially devoted to the care of his
land. He leaves behind his wife and three
children, Theo, Fay, and Yarrow.
H e is the son of Marion and Thomas
Slakey, a tutor emeritus and former dean of
St. John's, and the brother of Tom, Jr.
(SF81); Bill (SF88); and the Rev. Anne
Slakcy (SF88).
"Michael had an exceptional capacity to
take pleasure in what he was doing at the
moment, whether it was in the hard work of
cutting his own trees with an axe and
smoothing planks with an adze, weeding
and planting his garden, sitting and playing
his guitar or his Irish flute, or painting,"
his father wrote.
M UNTt;F. 8U UIIJAJLY, JK., CLA:>i> ot· 1947
Monte Ferris Bourjaily, Jr., who had been
the publisher and editor of Globe Syndicate
since 1977, died Jan. 4 at his home in Front
Royal, Va., after a heart attack.
Mr. Bourjaily was born in ClevelaJ1d, Ohio,
and raised across the country as he accompanied his journalist parents on their
assignments. He served in the Army Signal
Corps in Europe during World War II.
Early in his career, he was a reporter for a
newspaper in Floyd County, Va., and worked
in the U.S. House of Representatives radio
gallery. From 1952 to 1966, he worked for
Army Times as an associate editor and
author of the " Kibitzer's Corner" column.
He then was an executive assistant in
Washington for the Oklai1orna-based architectural, engineering, and planning furn of
Hudgins, Thompson, Ball and Associates.
Survivors include his wife of 61 years,
Marietta Dake Bourjaily of Front Royal, Va.,
and six children.
MARGARET NEUSTADT RANooL
Maigaret Neustadt RaJ1dol of Baltimore,
who was married to former St. John's Dean
John 0. Neustadt, died at her home in
Baltimore in December 2.004. She was 83,
and had been a longtime civil-rights activist
in the city. She was well known for her work
with Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., the
Maryland Commission on Human Relations,
and American Civil Liberties Union.
MI CHAEL TOBCN, FORMER BVGMEMBER
Michael E. Tobin died April 2.1, at the age of
79, at his home in Tesuque, New Mexico.
He served as a member of the college's
Board ofVisitors and Governors from
1994-2000.
Mr. Tobin was born in Philadelphia. He
lettered in fencing and soccer at Central
High School. He attended the University of
Pennsylvania until he was drafted into the
U.S. Army, where he served in Europe.
After the war, he remained in France to
study classical piano. Although mus ic
remained one of his passions throughout his
life, Mr. Tobin returned to complete his
studies at Penn's "Wharton School of
Business. He inoved to New York to launch
a career in finance, later joining the firm
of Arthur Young and Company. There he
worked in bank and securities consulting
and became partner in charge of the
Chicago and Western offices.
As president of the Midwest Stock
Exchange, he pioneered automation for the
exchange, making it the second-largest
market in the U.S. by dollar volume. He later
became chairman and CEO of the American
Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. That
bank became the sponsor of a program that
sent teachers in Chicago's Paideia program
(which introduced Socratic seminars to
public-school classrooms) to the Graduate
Institute in Santa Fe.
Throughout his life, Mr. Tobin was actively
committed to the arts, and when he moved
to Santa Fe, he became an ardent supporter
of the Santa Fe Symphony. He also continued to cultivate a lifelong interest in world
history and Western literature at St. John's,
where he took part in comm unity seminars.
Mr. Tobin is survived by his wife, Judith
Brown Tobin; his children Michael, Jr.,
Allegra Love, and Corey; a stepson, Brett
Sylvestri and wife Virginia; and four
grandchildren.
EMIL MAsSA, FlUEND OF T HE MEEM LIBRARY
Dr. Emil J. Massa, who died in October
2.004, took an interest in St. John's College
as early as the mid-197os. Perhaps he fust
visited on one of his regular trips to Santa Fe
to attend the city's world-famous opera. By
1992., Dr. Massa had included the Meern
Library in his estate plan. Now, his bequest
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St. John's College . Spring 2005
will fund an endovm1ent for maintenance of
the library's collections.
Dr. Massa settled in Denver, Colo., as an
orthopedic surgeon in 1960. Born into a
first-generation immigrant family in the
Cleveland, Ohio, area, he attended
Dennison College in connection with his
military service, followed by medical school
at Northwestern University. Dr. Massa was
keenly aware of the value of a good education-not only professionally, but spiritually
as well. Following his formal schooling, he
became an avid reader and bibliophile of
broad and formidable intellect, drawn
especially to the humanities ru1d liberal arts
and sciences.
Dr. Massa was always questioning,
confronting his ideas with those of others
and trying to discern the best way to live.
He found it in his appreciation of fine workmanship of all kinds-books and the craft of
bookbinding, art, music, fine automobiles,
and wine-but most of all in his ongoing
personal search for truth. No great idea, he
believed, can flourish without serious
conversation, one of the highest activities in
which humans can engage. To enter the
conversation in earnest, we must know what
has been said already. For this, as Dr. Massa
knew, the best education is a study of the
greatest books ever written.
A LSO NOTED:
FRED ALEXANDER (class ofi937) , December
2.2., 2.004
LurH ER BLACKJSTON (A68), January 18, 2.005
MICHAEL B LUME (A78) , February 7, 2.005
} A.MPS H. C 1moERS (SFGI70), October 9,
2.004
WJLLL\M C. H ALL (class of1946), December
18, 2.004
ROWLAND ALFRED JONES (class ofx949),
February 2.1, 2.005
GEORGE L YON, JR. (class ofx940), January
14, 2.005
D UNCAN M CDONALD, former An napolis
tutor, January 2.4, 2.005
ERICH NUSSBAUM ( class of 1945), March 18,
2.005
HAROL D OAV1 0 Runm (Ao4), December
2.004
DEBORAH MICAEL TIIIELKER (A79), April 17,
2.005
J AMES TINDALL (class ofi949), March 2.4,
2.005
)
�44
COMMUNITY
F OR T H E
S AKE
O F
Miss HucHEY-COMMERS LEAVES ST. JOHN'S
WITH A PASSION FOR COMMUNITY EDUCATION.
LEARNI N G ,
LEARNING
FOR T H E
SAKE
OF
COMM UNI TY
sv Ea,,. Hucttsv-COMMEas, A05
hroughout.high school my
image of college was a place
where people came together
to explore the knowable
world with gusto; I envisioned lively discussions and
a feeling of fulfilJment when I turned in
each assignment. I was interested in a kind
oflearning that would involve my whole
being- that would inform not only which
answer I put dovm on the test but also teach
me how to live in a more thoughuul way
once I stepped outside the classroom. And
I was interested in sharing this kind of
learning with other people who were
engaged in the same activity. I was fortunate
to find St. John's.
As an underclassman what I loved most
about the Program was the discussion.
How well I remember staying up until one
in the morning after my first seminar talking with my hallrnates about the character
of Odysseus in Homer's Iliad, or, much
later, my euphoria after reading Plotinus,
who, in his way of speaking about God
without personification, gave me just the
insight I needed to begin to talk about the
word of God in the Book ofJohn for my oral
examination. I learned what an amazing
thing it is to have a really good seminar, in
which the conversation takes its own
course, free of any student attempting to
determine its direction, and in which something completely new and unexpected is
clarified out of the chaos of my own reading.
Long after the newness of St. John's wore
off, I continued to find myself in unexpectedly thoughtful conversations, often in the
lunchroom with someone I didn' t know, or
with the girls on my hall while brushing
teeth after seminar.
Many of the books we read deal with the
question of what it means to live a good and
virtuous life. Reading and discussing these
T
books changed, among other things, the
way I thought about my future. When I
came to St. John's, J knew that I wanted to
be a teacher. In my previous teaching
experiences, I had enjoyed helping students
discover the fun of learning, and showing
them that they were capable of more than
they had believed. After coming to
St. John's and reading so many books that
applied directly to my life, I became interested in finding a way of teaching that would
provide students with the opportunity to
make the clear connection between what
they were learning in class and their lives
outside of school. Before, it had seemed
enough for me to help students bring themselves as whole people to their learning, and
what I had hoped to accomplish as a teacher
had rested in empowering individuals by
helping them enter the world oflearning;
now I saw it was equally important that they
turn back to their daily lives as snidentsthat they thus learn how to live thoughtfully
as well as learn vibrantly. Teaching enlarged
its scope then; I came to see it as the work of
strengthening a society.
As a resuJt, I became interested in the
Waldorf School, which is based on the
writings of Austrian philosopher Rudolf
Steiner. The summer following my sophomore year, I was fortunate to get a Hodson
internship to work in a Waldorf School for
the remainder of their school year. In the
process of giving its students a balanced
education, including art, music, and
handwork, the Waldorf School also seeks
to awaken in students an awareness of
themselves as a part of a social and natural
whole-and to prepare them to make
thoughuul decisions about the way that they
act as citizens of this whole. In addition the
Waldorf School is an example of the way
that philosophical ideas can be implemented in the world. It turned out that it
{ THE
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St. John 's College. Spring aoo5 )
provides an education much like the one
that Socrates describes in the Republic,
the education of the future philosopherk.ings: certain kinds of music arc played and
stories told based on the students' level of
development.
The summer after my junior year, I
received another Hodson grant to intern
with the Nelson County Museum of Rural
History in central Virgina, where I learned
about the work of educating an entire
community. Dttring the internship, J helped
lead an oral-history workshop for fourthand fifth-graders, in which we invited senior
citizens to be interviewed on tape. Everyone
benefited from this experience: the older
people were happy to share their stories and
spend time with the students, and the
snidents showed surprise and pleasure at
what the seniors told them about life during
the Depression. History became real for
these students through conversations with
their elders, once again demonstrating the
importance of dialogue to meaningful
learning. I believe that such dialogue is not
only important for education but also
essential for seeing oneself as part of a
larger whole- as a citizen of a locality where
one's actions have a direct and tangible
effect on the community.
Since becoming a student at St. John's,
I have been impressed by how much
learning depends upon interaction with
other people. One night in seminar, toward
the end of the semester, I felt weighed down
and found myself participating little in the
discussion. I was stopped after class by
another student who asked me my thoughts
on the conversation. I expressed my frustration, and we shared anecdotes about the
tension we felt while sitting in seminar,
often caught between interrupting the flow
of conversation and wanting to clarify a
particular point for ourselves. It was so
45
{ ST U D ENT V OI CES}
{STUDENT VOIC E S}
refreshing to talk to a classmate like this
that I began to speak more vigorously and to
feel more impassioned about our seminar.
When I returned to my room that night I
had gotten my energy back for the Program.
There is something amazing about the
power of conversation. Not only do we
uncover ideas and get co ask ourselves
questions we would never have thought
about on our ovm, but we are also able to
discuss the learning process itself, to realize
what is standing in the way, and above all to
become connected once again with our
passion for learning. When we learn
through dialogue, our relationship to
learning is not distinguishable from our
relationship to ocher people. Through that
human relationship, we are able to pursue
truth and knowledge as whole beings.
In the Republic Socrates divides the soul
into three parts: the highest is the intellect,
the lowest, the desiring part, and that which
connects these is the spirited part, or
thumos. When I said at the beginning of my
talk that I wanted to bring my whole self to
learning, I meant that I wanted the spirited
part of me to be just as involved in the
conversation in its own way as the intellectual part. Spiritedness not only asks but
embodies the question, "Why is this
important to me?" Even in the most
abstract discussion, something must be
at stake for the conversation to live and
breathe, for us to find ourselves in it.
That's the thing about St. John's- through
our interaction with the people around us
and, by means of the texts, with the great
thinkers of our culture, we enter into
learning with all parts of the soul and we
discover that there is little chat does not
interest us.
At St. John's we call ourselves a community of learning. My time here, as well as my
summer internships, has driven home for
{ THE
CoLLBCE,St.John'sCollege,Spring2005}
me the truth that in order for either to be
ftilly what it is, community and education
must not be separate. Thinking along these
lines, during my fall and winter breaks this
year I have worked with teachers, students,
and community leaders in Nelson County
to design a program for high school
students in which they will learn about
the workings oflocal government by
conducting research, attending meetings,
discussing issues, and writing articles
for the newspaper about what they are
learning. Starling this fall, I will coorclinate
the program for a year; beyond that, I am
excited about making community education the focus in my career. Indeed, I am
indebted co St. John's for helping me
find such a strong focus for my career as
a teacher.
When my parents told me they would be
unable to help me pay tuition at St. John's,
I began to fill out application forms for as
many local and national scholarships as I
had time to apply for. I knew that St. John's
was the right school for me, and I believed
that somehow it would be possible for me to
go. I was extremely fortunate in chat a
Ruritan club, a local church, and a private
foundation assisted me at different times.
At first it seemed awkward co be receiving
money from others; however, after the first
time that I went to the Episcopal church
service to thank the parish for its help, the
experience of being a scholarship recipient
changed. When I stood up to telJ the
congregation about my work at St. John's
and saw so many smiling faces looking back
at me, I realized I was not alone in my
endeavor, financial or academic.
It is easy for us to consider our education
as something we obtain ourselves, for
ourselves. What I've realized in the course
of talking with my sponsors is that this is
not true. An education is brought about
through the efforts of many people and if
all goes weJJ, many people will be the
beneficiaries of that education. To put it
more strongly, an education is a gift from a
community to a community. I've come to
the place of being able to accept help with
deep gratitude, joyfuIJy looking forward to
the time when I can give back, and aJJowing
the boundary between myself and my
community to become less distinct. ♦
�{ALUMNI AssocrATION NEws}
FROM THE ALUMNI
AssoCIATION
PRESIDENT
•
•
•
Dear Alumni,
•
Even at St. John's
College, technology
changes quickly.
Last year, the
college and the
Alumni Association
instituted an online
register, which provided little more
than contact information for alumni from
both campuses and all programs. Thanks
to all of you who registered for your commitment and patience during a bumpy
implementation process.
This year, the online register is being
replaced with an Online Alumni Community, a user-friendly, flexible, and powerful
tool to help you connect with fellow alumni
in many different ways. This new virtual
community offers:
• Powerful search features to help you
find and connect with other alumni.
The site is designed to allow alumni
to conduct a search for special networking-for example, look for alumni
working in the Jcgal field in New York
City. As more alumni become
•
•
•
•
•
• Phoco galleries from special alumni
events, such as chapter picnics,
outings, and Homecoming, can be
posted here.
It is a wonderful and flexible tool for
staying connected with others and with the
college, and we' ve only begun to use just a
fraction of the features available. One area
ripe for development is a Career Services
section that allows Johnnies to learn of job
openings, post resumes, and advertise
positions that are just right for Johnnies.
If you're concerned that the list could be
used for "spamming," don't worry: the
system has safeguards built in to avoid
alumni or unauthorized users from
creating lists from the system.
Your friends can only reach you through
the Online Community if you have registered as a member. As of May, close to r,600
alumni have joined the community, with
our younger alumni really taking the lead.
It only talccs a few minutes, and approval is
most often automatic-so do it today. You
should also encourage your friends to
register, so you can reach them through this
virtual "Johnnie homecoming."
members, this search feature will be
more helpful.
Announcements for alumni and other
college events around the country.
Member forums where you can start a
conversation or enter one in progress.
Information about Alumni Association
chapters' contact information and
activity schedules.
Faculty listings from both campuses
with e-mai l addresses.
" Meeting space" for special groups of
alumni. One current group is Military
Family Alumni, for alumni who are
either serving in or associated with
the military. Mary Ruffin (Ao4)
started the group after marrying a
Naval officer.
"Personal space" where you can share
information about yourself with ocher
alumni, including your personal page,
buddy list, web log, photo album, and
resume.
Class home pages, class notes, and
e-mail lists to help you stay in touch
with members of your class. Alumni
notes from The College magazine will
be posted here, and classnotes you
submit through the online community
will also be printed in the next edition
of the magazine.
Instant messaging.
A process that allows you to easily
upload your photos of special events
(a wedding) or special people (the new
baby) to share with your classmates.
It was a busy year for Alumni Association
chapters across the country, with the usual
mix ofhmchcons and receptions, potlucks,
picnics, and seminars. (With or without
a potluck, Johnnies still turn out for a
seminar.)
Here's a look at what's happening:
• Albuquerque had six seminar/
potlucks; Austin had IO seminars,
Baltimore enjoyed five seminars and
hosted a networking seminar for
juniors and seniors with the Annapolis
and Washington, D.C., chapters.
• The revival continues for the Boston
chapter, which reported an "excel{T
tt &
Co LL E c e . St. John's College. Spring 2005
GRANT PRESERVES
GYM PLAQUES
le talces 2.0 laps around the suspended
wooden track in Iglehart Hall to complete a
mile. That gives determined joggers and
walkers ample opportunity co read the
plaques lining the wall of the gymnasium in
Annapolis, reminders from past generations
of}ohnnie athletes that every sport requires
the best effort every time.
Thanks to a grant from the Alumni
Association, the plaques look better than
they have in years: 23 of 38 plaques in the
collection, commemorating the alumni of
the years 1871-192.8, have been cleaned and
restored. The association provided a grant
for the work, which cost $3,800. These
plaques are of both nostalgic and historic
value to alumni, being among the very few
publicly displayed relics of the college's postCivil War through post-World War I period.
A ss O C I A TI ON
N EWS }
The class of 1889 left behind the motto
Respice Finem- "look to the encl." The class
ofr916 was a bit more Spartan in its athletic
philosophy: Aul Vince,-e Aut Mori- "co conquer or die, death or victory." The Latin
phrases embodied by those athletic teams of
years past represent a time when St. John's
competed with the likes of Navy and Johns
Hopkins in football and lacrosse, and usually
won. Lofty values that transcended athletics
were also emblazoned on the plaques:
Omnia Vinci, Veritas, "truth conquers all
things," declared the class ofr927.
The plaques were cleaned and oxidized to
a dark statuary finish, with an architectural
coating applied. "Now you can really sec
chem- even read the names-and from the
court floor no less," says Athletic Director
Leo Pickens. "Until the cleaning they were
just like dark holes on the wall. The details
on many of them are almost architectural
and quite lovely." ♦
47
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in
the St. John's College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors elected by and from the alumni body. The board
meets four times a year, twice on each campus,
to plan programs and coordinate the affairs of
the association. This newsletter within
The College magazine is sponsored by the
Alumni Association and communicates
association news and eve ms of interest.
President - Glenda Eoyang, SF76
Vice President - Jason Walsh, A85
Secretary-Barbara Lauer, SF76
'freasurer- Bill Fant, A79
Cetting•tlze-Word•OutAction Team ChairLinda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mai/i,,gaddress-Alumni Association,
St. John's College, P.O Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or n6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
To register, go to:
www.stjohnscollege.cdu; click on "alumni"
and follow the directions from there.
For the past, present, and future,
Glenda H. Eoyang
President
St. John's College Alumni Association
lent" year with 13 well-attended
seminars, many of which attracted
new faces. Boulder enjoyed a poetry/
reading potluck along with 10 seminars; Chicago had seven seminars,
and there were six seminars-one with
dinner-for the Greater Puget Sound
chapter.
• As one of the largest chapters, New
York is very busy: five seminars, seven
movie nights, a reception picnic, and a
holiday party. The chapter expanded
its Web site significantly this year.
• In Northern California, eight seminars
and a seminar/picnic at Stag's Leap;
one seminar and one outing to the
Philadelphia Sha.Jcespeare Festival for
Philly, and 12 seminars for Pittsburgh.
• In Portland, alumni have been meeting
regularly since October and have had
AROUND THE
CHAPTERS
{AL U M N I
four seminars since July. A tea party
and six seminars took place in Santa
Fe, six in Southern California, r2 in
the Twin Cities, where the chapter
completed a yearlong plunge into the
theme of ""Who are we as Americans?·'
• A highlight for the Washington, D.C.,
chapter was "A Day in the Country,"
hosted by Sharon Bishop (A65), with
Eva Brann leading a seminar. The
chapter will return this spring to
Bishop's country place for another day
in the country with a great book.
• In seven other areas, reading groups
are considering organizing chapters,
or the association is reaching out to
alumni to gauge the interest in getting
a group of Johnnies together. ♦
- COMPILED BY CAROL FREEMAN, AGl94
}
PLAQUES LINING THE WALLS OF IGLEHART H ALL
ARE GLEAMING ONCE AGAIN, THANKS TO AN
ALUMNI AsSOCIATION GRANT.
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed below for information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
actfrities in each area.
ALBUQUERQUE
BALTIMORE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
Deborah Cohen
505-275-9012
410-472'-9158
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Ginger Kenney
617-964-4794
AUSTIN
John Strange
210-39 2-5506
Bev Angel
512,-926-7808
CHICAGO
Rick Ligh tburn
lightburn@
earthlink.net
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Suzanne Lexy
Bartlette
817-i21-9rx2
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
72~46-1496
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST.PAUL
Carol Freeman
612,-822-3216
{ THE
Co
LL E c E.
NEWYORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-g49-68rr
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake@law-works.com
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-i31-8804
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
619•423-4972
PHILADELPHIA
Bart Kaplan
215-465-0244
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-4151
St. John 's College. Spring ,ioo5 }
SEATTLE
Amina Brandt
206-465"'7781
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562,-426-1934
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jean Dickason
301-699•6207
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Julia Ward
413-648-0064
�{ST.
JOHN'S
FOREVER}
"COEDS INVADE
ST. JottN's"
n the fall of 1950, the faculty
of St. John's College voted to
admit women the following year.
As Richal'd Weigle later recounted
in his book Recollections ofa
St. Johns President, the vote was
to be kept secret until the college's Board
ofVisitors and Governors t0ok up the
matter. One eal'ly plan suggested the
possibility of establishing a women's
college with the St. John's PI"ogram.
The enrollment of women was in pal't
a response tO the college's difficulty in
building enrollment and achieving
financial stability. But the overriding
reason, Weigle said, was that women
wanted to be here.
When the news leaked out shortly after
the boal'd's approval of the matter, he
wrote, "students were in an uproar.
A protest meeting was held in the Great
Hall of McDowell ...just before students
left for Christmas vacation .... Students
believed that discussions in serninal's and
tutorials would suffer and that women
were not up to the rigors of the St. John's
Program," Weigle wrote.
The banner headline in the Evening
Capital was set in type just a bit smaJ ler
than the news of a big development in
the Korean Wal'. It read: "Local College
to Offer Program to Limited Number
of Girls."
A yeal' later, the Washington Post
greeted the arrival of women with a photo
spread and the headline, "Girl Students
First to Enter Old College." The article
quoted some male students as saying, "we
were afraid... that they were going to be a
bunch of giggly girls, only interested in the
Naval Academy." The men, the article
concluded, were pleasantly surprised to
note that the women took the rigors of the
Program as seriously as they did.
This fall mal'ks the 50th anniversary of
the 1955 graduation of those pioneering
women. Several members of the class are
expected back for Homecoming in
Annapolis this fall, where their role in
forever changing the face of St. John's will
be celebrated. ♦
{ TH E
Co LL E c
&•
St. John's College . Spring 2005
FEMALE STUDENTS LEAVE CLASS IN MCDOWELL
HALL WITH TUTORS AND CLASSMATES,
DATE DUE
I
}
I
�S!JOHN'S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS• SANTA. f'&
PUBLISHED BY THE
COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
P. 0. Box z8oo
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND z1404
ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED
PERIODICALS
POSTACE PAID
�
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The College, Spring 2005
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Volume 31, Issue 2 of The College Magazine. Published in Spring 2005.
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Hartnet, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Goyette, Barbara
Hughey-Commers, Erin
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Weiss, Robin
Martin, Roger H.
Verdi, John
Donnelly, Jennifer A.
Myers, Linda
Hughey-Commers, Erin
The College
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6ac89f193dc04cd89da823b16684ac8f.pdf
e56e5e9f4f2310153182d7cf8b4adf85
PDF Text
Text
�On Melville
n an acclaimed new biography of Herman Melville ^Melville: His World and
Work), Andrew Delbanco writes of how Melville drew on his experiences as a
seafarer to create his masterwork, Moby-Dick. However, Melville was at a
point in his literary career where he was ready to go beyond the adventure
stories of his popular earlier novels, Typee, Omoo, and White-Jacket.
During a picnic on Monument Mountain, not far from Melville’s country home, the
Melville had been engaged in extensive reading, and a fateful meeting-with
author took cover during a rainstorm with Nathaniel Hawthorne, then 46 and much
another author in 1850 had such a powerful influence on him that he
admired by the younger writer. The two hours the men spent in conversation, according
approached his work-in-progress with an entirely new vision.
to Delbanco, left Melville filled with new aspirations. After that meeting, he revised
his novel with perspective gained from all the great works he had immersed himself in:
the Bible, Paradise Lost, Wc. Aeneid, Frankenstein, and Shakespeare’s tragedies.
He accomplished a “stylistic breakthrough,” Delbanco tells us, but the transformation
went much deeper: “In his fever of creation, Melville became Emerson’s proverbial poet,
whose ‘imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to
embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind.’ His book opened out into
the panorama of history and myth to which he had been exposed in his reading, from the
Western scriptures to Eastern tales of dervishes and devil worshippers.”
The publication of Moby-Dick in September 1851 came during a remarkable period for
American literature, when Americans were struggling with soul-wrenching issues such
as slavery which would determine the character of our nation. Between 1850 and 1855,
seven important books were published: Emerson’s Representative Men-, Thoreau’s
Walden, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and The House ofSeven Gables, Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass, and Melville’s Moby-Dick and Pierre.
Moby-Dick
a great commercial disappointment, selling only 2,300 copies in its
first months. The reviews were mixed. “The intense Captain Ahab is too long drawn out;
something more of him might, we think, be left to the reader’s imagination,” wrote the
reviewer for Literary World. The London Morning Post-was more insightful, if not
exactly prophetic: “There is much that is incredible and a little that is incomprehensible
in this latest effort of Mr. Melville’s wayward and romantic pen; but despite its occasional
extravagancies, it is a book of extraordinary merit, and one which will do great things for
the literary reputation of its author.”
His next novel, Pierre, drew on Melville’s life story, growing up in a family of
distinction but greatly reduced circumstances. His hopes of surviving on his literary
efforts crushed, Melville took a menial job as a customs inspector. He died in debt and
obscurity in 1891. Billy-Budd, a book that alternates with Benito Cereno on the reading
list for senior seminar today, was greeted with critical acclaim when published in 1924.
Johnnies who enjoy making literary excursions can visit Arrowhead, the 1780 farm
house in Pittsfield, Mass., where Melville wrote his great novel. Those whose devotion to
the novel goes even further may want to take part in one of several annual marathon
readings Moby-Dick, such as one held aboard the Charles W. Morgan, the last
surviving wooden whaling vessel, or another held at the New Bedford Whaling Museum,
not far from where Melville shipped out on the Achushnet in 1841.
-RII
I
STJOHN’S
College
ANNAPOLIS . SANTA FE
The College (usps 018-750)
is published quarterly by
St. John’s College, Annapohs, MD,
and Santa Fe, NM
Known office of publication:
Communications Office
St. John’s College
Box 2800
Annapolis, MD 21404-2800
Periodicals postage paid
at Annapolis, MD
postmaster: Send address
changes to The College
Magazine, Communications
Office, St. John’s College,
Box 2800, Annapolis, MD
21404-2800.
Rosemary Harty, editor
Patricia Dempsey,
managing editor
John Hartnett (SF83),
Santa Fe editor
Jennifer Behrens, art director
Annapolis
410-626-2539
Santa Fe
505-984-6104
Contributors
Sus3an Borden (A87)
Barbara Goyette (A73)
Caroline Knapp (SF99)
Andra Maguran
Jo Ann Mattson (A87)
Erica Naone (A05)
Chris Utter (A06)
Magazine design by
Claude Skelton Design
�"I "I
College
Vol
The
ZINE FOR Alumni of St. John’s College
y
Annapolis •
{Contents}
PAGE
IO
DEPARTMENTS
Santa Fe Welcomes a
President
At his Inauguration in October, President
Michael Peters received a warm welcome
and pledges of support from both the
St. John’s and Santa Fe communities.
PAGE
Iz|
Lives in their Hands
8
LETTERS
9
HISTORY
Bibliofile
Peter Pesic takes up a standard
childhood question.
Linda Weiner considers the limitations
of science.
Losing Moby
PAGE
Miss Brann Honored by the NEH
Santa Fe GI Program Supports Teachers
Intellectual Fisticuffs in Annapolis
Fishpond Renovations
Johnnies on the Water
Helping New Orleans
Grant Aids in Shoreline Restoration
30
20
How Moby-Dick has submerged and
resurfaced over the years offers a bit of
insight into decisions about the college’s
reading list.
FROM THE BELL TOWERS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Gil Crandall (class 011936) shares
memories of being a “rat.”
Working with wood, metal, and glass,
four Johnnies make beautiful and
enduring objects.
PAGE
a
3a ALUMNI NOTES
PAGE
18
PROFILES
3a Joseph Houseal (A84) follows his love of
26
dance to the Himalayas.
36 Fighting fear with reason; David Veazey
O, Pioneers!
(A97) fights a deadly disease.
39 Shana Hack (A95) follows a dream.
Homecoming in Annapolis features a
tribute to the women of the Class of 1955.
41 Entrepreneur Paul Laur (SFGI95) keeps
family at the heart of his business.
48 OBITUARIES
Remembering Santa Fe Tiitor
Ralph Swentzell.
48 STUDENT VOICES
PAGE
26
After Katrina: Writer Sara Roahen (SF94)
describes a visit home.
50 ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS
ON THE COVER
Herman Melville
Illustration by DavidJohnson
5a ST. John’s FOREVER
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Miss Brann GJoes to the White House
Annapolis Tutor is one of Twelve NEH Medalists
November lo and ii
were whirlwind days for
long-time Annapolis
tutor Eva Brann: feted at
an award dinner hosted
by the National Endow
ment for the Humanities
in Washington, D.C.,
meeting George W. and
Laura Bush in the Oval
Office, and being one of
the guests of honor at a
State Dinner with lumi
naries including Judith
Martin (Miss Manners)
and actor Robert Duval.
But what is one of the
first things she mentions
when asked to recount
the experience? The
books she was given.
One was a novel, Henry
and Clara, written by
NEH’s acting deputy chairman, Tom Mallon, who sat at her table
during the awards dinner. “It is about Henry Rathbone, who was in
the box with Lincoln when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at
Ford’s Theatre. He later goes stark raving mad and kills his wife.
Thebookwas very well done,” Miss Brann says. The second was
Thieves ofBaghdad, a new work published by a fellow honoree,
Col. Matthew Bogdanos, who wrote about the efforts he led to save
Iraq’s antiquities. “It is a thriller,” Miss Brann says. “The work he
did required courage and ingenuity.”
In addition to bringing home a couple of very good books,
there was another tremendously gratifying aspect to the events.
Miss Brann says. Both President Bush and NEH Chairman Bruce
Cole referred to St. John’s as a “national treasure,” something that
caused her to glow with pride. “It is nice to know that the college
has a reputation in Washington and with the NEH that is real and
serious,” she says.
Miss Brann learned at the end of October that she was selected
to receive the National Humanities Medal, given in recognition
of outstanding scholarship. The honor is awarded to those
“whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the
humanities, broadened citizens’ engagement with the humanities,
or helped preserve and expand America’s access to important
humanities resources.”
The news came from Mr. Cole, who phoned her personally. “I was
dumbstruck,” Miss Brann recalls. Soon after, she received a call
from the White House social secretary, who filled her in on the
protocol for the White House ceremony with the President and the
State Dinner. Miss Brann, who gets by with the most basic of
wardrobes, was forced to go on a shopping spree, buying three
outfits. She added costume jewelry that has been in her family for
decades. “My father was a doctor in Brooklyn, and when patients
had no money to pay, they
would bring him their
jewelry,” she explains.
Miss Brann could
choose three guests to
accompany her; she
invited her pubUsher and
good friend Paul Dry and
his wife. Cede, of
Philadelphia. The third
invitation went to
Annapolis President
Christopher Nelson
(SF70). The three
attended a reception and
dinner at the Madison
Hotel, where Miss Brann
was pleased to meet one of
her personal heroines,
Judith Martin. “I told her,
‘you’re the ruler of my
life! ’ She was very nice.”
The next morning.
Miss Brann, her guests,
Meeting President George W. Bush
AND First Lady Laura Bush was
and other honorees were
EXCITING, BUT THE BEST PART, ACCORDING
picked up by bus and
TO Christopher Nelson and Eva
brought to the White
Brann, was hearing St. John’s praised
House. One by one, the
AS A “national treasure.”
honorees were led into
the Oval Office. “I went in
and Mrs. Bush and the
President greeted me very kindly,” she says. “We had our picture
taken, and the President said, ‘you have a nice smile! ’ He was very
fit and very friendly.” The President hung her medal around her
neck, and soon all the medalists and their guests were gathered in
the Oval Office. “After talking with Miss Manners, the President
said, ‘I think now that I’ll send you over to the Congress.’ ”
The President told his guests about some of the famous items in
the Oval Office, including the Resolute desk, made from the
timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to
President Hayes. “Then he said he had to go-’I’m going to meet
the president of Yemen,’ he said, ‘to talk to him very seriously
about terrorism.’ ”
Many speeches followed at the NEH ceremony at the Metropol
itan Club. “Again, the college was very much to the fore,”
Miss Brann said. Next, the honorees were brought to the NEH
Building for a panel discussion. “I was asked whom I would most
like to meet among the dead-I said Lincoln.” St. John’s student
Mark McClay (A09), whose father. Bill McClay (A73), is a member
of the National Humanities Council, attended the discussion.
“It was very nice to have a student there,” Miss Brann says. “I made
him absent from lab.”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
continued on nextpage
�{From the Bell Towers}
Supporting Teachers
A Generous Gift Will Provide Santa Fe
GI Scholarships
Robert Warren (SFGI93) and his
wife, Carol, signed a planned
giving agreement that
establishes a scholarship for
working teachers pursuing
master’s degrees in the
Graduate Institute in Santa Fe.
The agreement, signed in
December, will provide financial
assistance to students attending
either the Liberal Arts or the
Eastern Classics programs who
are full-time primary or
secondary school teachers and
living and working in New
Mexico. The need-based scholar
ship may be granted to either
full-time or part-time students
in the graduate program. The
scholarship, tentatively valued
at between $325,000 and
$475,000, will be funded by a
percentage of the Warrens’
residuary estate.
The Warrens believe in the
value of a St. John’s education
and are particularly interested in
supporting the Graduate Insti
tute. Moreover, they want their
gift to recognize the value of the
GI to individual teachers living
and working in New Mexico
because they believe the
program enhances teachers’
effectiveness in the classroom.
When he attended the Grad
uate Institute from 1991 to 1993,
Bob Warren saw educators who
were committed to teaching and
to learning but who did not have
the resources to complete their
graduate studies in the same
timeframe as other students.
“I was with a number of teachers
who were doing the GI one-third
of a segment at a time. The
reason was money,” he says.
Warren is glad to be able to
help teachers who must take out
loans. “If we can help free
someone to get out from under
that rock of graduate school
debt, then it’s undeniably a
worthwhile undertaking,”
he says.
Krishnan Venkatesh, director
of the Graduate Institute, says
that teachers need this kind of
assistance. In New Mexico, the
average starting salary for
teachers is approximately
$27,500.
The Warren Family Scholar
ship at St. John’s College is the
Warren’s fourth endowment to a
college. They have established
and funded scholarships at his
and Carol’s alma maters, Hobart
and William Smith College in
Geneva, New York, at Cathohc
University’s Columbus School of
Law, where Bob earned his J.D.,
and a single funded scholarship
to enable an underprivileged
Seneca Indian girl to attend a
private elementary and
secondary school in Bob’s
hometown of Buffalo, N.Y.
For Bob Warren, creating the
Graduate Institute scholarship is
something he has wanted to do
for a long time. He hopes that
Carol Warren, Santa Fe
President Mike Peters,
Robert Warren (SFGI93), and
Santa Fe GI Director Krishnan
Venkatesh celebrate a new
SCHOLARSHIP THE WaRRENS HAVE
Others will follow in his foot
steps; in particular, he would
like to see more support for the
Graduate Institute in Santa Fe.
“Education is everything,” he
says. “What’s happened to the
idea that anyone who could do
well academically could receive
a higher education in this
country? It’s become reprehensibly expensive, curtailing that
opportunity for many who
deserve better.”
Santa Fe president Mike
Peters was delighted with the
Warrens’ support of the
Graduate Institute. “This is the
kind of continuing commitment
to the college that is really
vital,” he says.
While the Warrens’ scholar
ship agreement will help
Graduate Institute teachers in
Santa Fe at some time in the
future, the college’s own
National Educator’s Grant is
available now to support
teachers in the GI on both
campuses. For full-time public
or private school teachers with
at least three years of teaching
experience, the college will
grant a scholarship to pursue
either of the college’s graduate
programs. The grant provides
one-third of either program’s
tuition. Administrators,
curriculum developers, and
other educational professionals
are also eligible for this new
grant.
—AndraMaguran
ENDOWED.
continued
After resting and changing into her formal wear, it was back to
the White House for the State Dinner. “It was very elegant, without
being overpowering,” Miss Brann says of the event. “There were
endless, beautiful corridors, a quartet playing Mozart.” She and
President Nelson took their places in the receiving line, “and this
was really the high point,” Miss Brann says, “President Bush said,
‘Good evening, Eva. You have a wonderful college.’ ”
Miss Brann was seated at a table with Mrs. Bush. “We sat down to
a wonderful dinner,” followed by a performance by Allen Toussaint,
a jazz musician and composer who had lost his New Orleans home in
Hurricane Katrina.
Miss Brann tried with no success to find out who nominated her
for the award. After the story hit the national news, she received
warm letters from alumni all over the country. She is pleased, she
allows, but still a bit perplexed. “I think the college has more to do
with this than I,” she insists.
Her only disappointment in the whole affair was that DoUy
Parton, a Medal of Arts winner, was not able to attend. “I am a great
admirer,” says Miss Brann.
Seeing the White House, chatting with Robert Duval about his
films, and hearing accolades for his college also made the event
memorable for President Nelson, who had never been to the White
House before. He found it remarkable that the President knew
several former and current St. John’s students. One especially
enjoyable moment for Mr. Nelson was walking up to President Bush
in the receiving line and hearing the greeting, “and here’s the
other president.”
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
—Rosemary Harty
�4
{From the Bell Towers}
Fite Club
Tuesday-Nite Fites Allow Johnnies to Take the Gloves Off
BY Chris Utter { Ao6)
One of the most idiosyn
cratic parts of life on the
Annapolis campus in
recent years has been the
proliferation of clubs
with names like “Mabel
the Swimming Wonder
Monkey,” which meets to
watch and comment on
campy movies, and “Hoi
Strategoi,” organized
with the sole purpose of
playing the board game
“Diplomacy.” One of
these odd clubs, though,
the “Tuesday Nite
Fites,” has outstripped
them all in popularity.
On a good night, more
than 40 students partici- S
pate in the “fite,” a kind »
of sophistry contest.
It all began two years
ago with a series of
lectures given by Annapolis tutor Michael Comenetz. Comenetz
sent out a note to the Polity that ended with the statement, “there
will be some etymology and prostitution.” Erikk Geannikis (A06)
thought this was such a strange juxtaposition of subjects that he
wrote the two words on a chalkboard in the King William Room of
the Barr Buchanan Center. Throughout the day students drifted in
and out of the room, some deciding to vote on which concept was
superior by putting a mark under one of them. Geannikis saw this
and thought it was so funny that he decided to pit two new
concepts,''Puliteia vs. Caramella,” against each other, for people
to debate about and then vote on. Shortly thereafter Geannikis
institutionalized the process by securing a charter for the club
from the student council.
The kind of debate that goes on at a fite is, in part, something
we are used to at St. John’s. It is an exercise in comparing two
concepts in the abstract, even though we may not have related the
two ideas before. “That’s the benefit of Tuesday Nite Fites,” says
Brian Jones (Ao6)-gaining a clear idea of concepts we use every
day.” But the TNF format gives students the chance to indulge in
something we can’t do in seminar: debate, compete, and argue.
“It’s a kind of catharsis,” says Jones. “I think that’s why so many
students show up.”
Nevertheless, as in seminar, the merit of an argument depends
on its ability to get to the heart of the matter. “It’s not a candy
shop,” says Schuyler Sturm (A08), quoting one of the club’s
mottos. In other words, the outcome does not depend on which
concept people like more, but which one is demonstrated to be
superior. For example, in the debate “Pants vs. Dance,” at first the
debaters were at a loss even to compare the ideas, let alone decide
{The College
Beyond Sophistry: The
TOPICS MAY BE BIZARRE,
BUT THESE JOHNNIES TAKE
DEBATE SERIOUSLY. LeFT TO
RIGHT ARE AnNAPOLIS
STUDENTS Max Kronberg,
Meghan Lockard, Brian
Jones, Genna Hinkle,
AND Christopher Stuart.
which one was better.
Diagrams of pants were
drawn on the chalkboard,
and liters vehemently
tried to persuade the
other side that they were
right. Eventually,
though, the thought
struck someone that
“pants” could also be the
plural for “pant,” as in
panting for breath.
And since “pants,” as
breaths, are necessary in order to “dance,” pants ended up
winning because of its priority. Often, if something can be shown
to be a priori, that concept will win the fite.
There is always a “Title Fite,” which is the main fight of the
evening, and which is usually a little more serious, for example,
“Ways vs. Curves”; this is followed by the “Two Hole,” which
some have called “earthier” than the rest; the “Brian Jones Fite,”
and the “Seminar Fite,” which pits two, usually senior, seminar
topics against each other. At the end of the nite, each fiter votes
for a winner. A memorable recent Title Fite was “Furniture vs.
Friction.” Most people sided with friction following the priority
argument. But then one of the combatants, struck by the blindness
of his peers, walked up to the blackboard and wrote, “Friction: too
subtle to be serious?” And after a fierce debate, furniture won. ‘‘It
won,” says Sturm, “because superiority is based on a stronger
concept, what affects the human mind more. For this reason, I
often discourage people from using the priority argument. Many
of the debates can be reduced simply to Nature vs. Art.”
Geannikis is graduating this year, but he has passed on the
archonship of the Tuesday Nite Fites to Sturm. Sturm was the only
freshman to show up for the first fite of his freshman year. Sturm
sees a bright future for TNF, which he views as more than just a
weekly sophistry contest.
“It’s useful as exercise for seminar in that we can think of
concepts purely in the abstract. I don’t know that this could exist
at another school; it would probably seem strange to outsiders.
But people here are used to strange oppositions between
subjects,” he says.
- St John’s College •
Winter 2006 }
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Fish on the Run
Students read by it. Faculty
fiddle by it. Children peer over
its edge. With the exception of
the bell tower of Weigle Hall, no
physical feature is more
emblematic of the Santa Fe
campus than the fishpond on
the Upper Placita, in front of
Peterson Student Center.
The pond and surrounding
garden were gifts from film
actress Greer Garson, who
donated funds for the project in
1964 in memory of her mother,
Nina S. Garson. Garson’s
husband. Buddy Fogelson, was a
member of the Board of Visitors
and Governors, and the two
were supporters of the college.
Designed as a two-foot deep
reflecting pool, the pond was
not originally intended to
accommodate fish, says Pat
McCue (SFGI83, EC97), land
scape and grounds supervisor.
It’s not quite deep enough for
healthy and happy fish, but that
didn’t stop local residents from
releasing overgrown goldfish
into the pool. It quickly became
a refuge for Santa Fe’s rejected
fish. (Several “legitimate” koi,
an ornamental variety of the
common carp, were donated by
former president John Balkcom,
SFGIoo.)
Later this spring, the
fishpond and its residents will
benefit from a much-needed
renovation project. The pool
will be made deeper, the water
fall will be repaired, and a water
line that runs beneath the pond
will be replaced. During
construction, he says, all of the
fish except the koi will be up for
adoption. Fish that are not
adopted will be distributed to
the pond in Schepp’s Garden, to
the president’s home, and to a
fish tank.
Most of the pond’s fish are
goldfish; a few catfish and
minnows have also taken up
residence with the elegant koi,
and every once in a while some
Johnnies on the Water
Annapolis Athletic Director
Leo Pickens (A78) has been
seeing more and more students
turning out for crew and
sailing. An analytical sort, he
crunched some numbers.
“With 61 students involved-45
in crew, 16 in sailing-that’s 13
percent of the St. John’s under
graduate students spending
time in boats on the water,”
he says.
Also a competitive sort,
Pickens did some comparing:
Washington College, on the
Chestertown River, and St.
Mary’s College, a sailing
powerhouse regularly atop the
collegiate rankings, each have
just 7 percent of their student
bodies involved in boat racing
sports. “Then I thought, ‘what
about the Naval Academy?
They have all those boats,’”
Pickens says.
The academy has just 9
percent of its midshipmen in
thing exotic-a rainbow trout,
for example-turns up. When he
has time, McCue feeds the fish,
though they could easily survive
on the pond’s algae and larvae.
For the most part, pond
maintenance is minimal, that is
until McCue has to repot all 18
of the water lilies. Among the
fish pond flora there is one
special variety, a lotus flower
symbolic of Eastern philosophy
that McCue donated in honor of
the Eastern Classics program.
Johnnies seem to develop a
special affection for the
crew or sailing. That’s 360
individuals, Pickens allows, but
percentage-wise, St. John’s wins.
In part, the new interest in
sailing is due to a fleet with
nine good boats. The program
also has a dedicated coach in
Buildings and Grounds
Supervisor Pat McCue sits on
THE EROZEN FISH POND, DUE FOR A
MAJOR OVERHAUL THIS SPRING.
ichthyoid residents of the pond.
Several years ago, “Stan,” a very
large koi, ruled the pond for
four years. When Stan died,
some students paid to have him
stuffed and mounted in the
dining hall, where he hung for a
few years until he mysteriously
disappeared.
—Andra Maguran
Skip Kovacs, also the college’s
boathouse manager, “a world
class sailor,” Pickens says.
“Sailboat racing is just plain
fun,” Pickens says. “They prac
tice as a team on Tuesdays and
Fridays, and on Wednesdays,
members are invited to go and
scrimmage with Navy.”
This spring, the team will
take part in a competition
hosted by the Mid-Atlantic
Intercollegiate Sailing
Association. “We’re taking
advantage of the great natural
resource of the Chesapeake
Bay, to get students out and
involved in water sports. It’s a
great fit for us-not like foot
ball,” says Pickens.
Johnnies churn up the Severn
River during crew practice
LAST FALL.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�6
{From the Bell Towers}
News and Announcements
Award for President Nelson
Last November, the Rosenbach
Museum & Library of Philadel
phia honored Annapolis
President Christopher B.
Nelson for “his passion for liter
ature and teaching.” The award
was presented at the museum’s
annual fund-raising event.
One of the cultural treasures
of Philadelphia, the Rosenbach
seeks to inspire curiosity,
inquiry, and creativity through
its exhibitions and programs.
A quick review of the museum’s
collections indicates why the
Rosenbach’s board of directors
would appreciate President
Nelson and St. John’s College.
Among the museum’s collec
tions are the finest known copy
of the first edition oiDon
Quixote, original drawings
and books by William Blake,
manuscripts by Joseph Conrad,
and a manuscript of James
Joyce’s Ulysses.
and Santa Fe community
together. Eakes is currently
principal of The Holly
Company, a consulting firm.
The society sponsors special
seminars, called Inviting
Conversations, which are
modeled after 18th-century
salon conversations, are led by a
St. John’s College tutor, and
take place in the home of a
Philos member.
The society’s newest
initiative, the Xenos Program,
seeks to involve St. John’s
students in their community by
arranging informal gatherings
at the homes of local residents,
who provide students with
career advice, local networking
contacts, or just a homecooked meal.
Off-Broadway Hit
New Tutors
Gabriel Pihas (A93) joined the
Annapolis faculty in January.
After graduating from
St. John’s, Pihas went on to earn
an M.A. and M. Phil in Medieval
Studies at Yale University. He
studied at the Committee on
Social Thought at the University
of Chicago, where he earned
master’s and doctoral degrees in
Social Thought. His academic
honors include an Evelyn S. Nef
Fellowship, the Marian and
Andrew Heiskell Pre-Doctoral
Rome Prize, and a Dissertation
Teaching and Research Fellow
ship at Chicago.
SF Chooses Philos Society
Chairman
Thomas G. Eakes, a busi
nessman and civic leader in
Santa Fe, has been elected to
serve as chairman of the Philos
Society, a steering group of
St. John’s College supporters
that works to bring the college
Santa Fe
sophomore
Laura Sook made
her directorial debut with
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, produced last
FALL BY Santa Fe students. It was met with critical acclaim from
both the campus community and locals who turned out for an
EVENING of musical THEATER FEATURING “MISTAKEN IDENTITIES,
PIRATES, AND OF COURSE, A LOVE STORY,” SoOK SAYS. FrOM LEFT TO
RIGHT, THE THESPIANS ARE: SOPHOMORES AbBY PetRY AND E. ElNOWSKI,
AND SENIOR Jeanne Bustamante.
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
Search & Rescue Honors
Volunteer
Winter usually sends the
St. John’s College Search and
Rescue out into the snow,
looking for lost skiers. But this
past November, the team found
one of their own to honor, dedi
cating the team’s emergency
operations center to Dr. Jerry
Allen in honor of his years of
service. AUen, a Santa Fe family
practice physician, joined the
team in 1973.
About 40 current and former
team members came together
to honor Allen. During the
ceremony, the center-located in
the basement of the Evans
Science Laboratory-was
officially renamed the Jerry
Allen Emergency Operations
Center, with a bronze plaque
installed. The center is the
team’s command post, where
radios are tuned to state police
and civil air patrol frequencies
and mission boards track teams
in the field.
In his remarks, Allen
shrugged off the attention. “I
would have to say that for all the
years I was on this team, I got
far more from the team than the
team got from me,” he said.
Team President Mike
Ongstad (SF06) recounted his
first meeting with Allen. “I
showed up for my first mission
with my pack full of gear. It was
about a a.m. And here was this
old guy who was going to lead
our team into the wilderness,
and I thought, ‘oh great, this is
going to be so slow.’ After the
first hour on the trail the
students had to ask him to slow
down so we could catch up,”
said Ongstad.
Team founder Herb Kincey
said that over the past 3a years,
Allen invested “tremendous”
effort into the volunteer organi
zation. “He’s worked with
generations of St. John’s
students and has always been
there for them,” he added. 4—John Haktnett
(SF83)
�{From
the
Bell Towers}
Johnnies Help in New Orleans
A few hours after their last
seminar in December, five
Annapolis Johnnies piled into a
car and headed south to New
Orleans to work in the city’s
devastated Ninth Ward. They
had volunteered for a group
called Common Ground, a New
York-based nonprofit housing
and community development
organization. Caleb Nolen (Ao8)
had been looking for a way to
help, and his Web search led him
to the group.
Nolen and Jessie Seiler (Ao8)
organized the trip, which also
included Joshua Becker (Ao8),
Micah Gates (Aog), and Rebecca
Harrison (Aog). Some of the
students stayed for the whole
winter break, sacrificing hoUday
celebrations with their families
to go to New Orleans. The
students spent their nights
sleeping on cots in the commu
nity center of a church and their
days gutting homes that were
badly damaged by flooding and
rendered uninhabitable by mold.
The experience was unsetthng,
the work was exhausting and
even dangerous, and at times,
the students felt overcome by a
tragedy of such proportion.
“The night we drove in, we saw
these mountains of trash piled
everywhere,” Seiler says. “It was
eerie, apocalyptic.”
At the same time, the
dedicated volunteers the
students encountered, especially
those working for Common
Ground, gave them some hope
for the city. “There are a lot of
really good people doing really
good things,” Nolen said.
Each person in the group was
assigned work suited to his or
her skills. Gates did technical
work; Becker worked in the
kitchen feeding volunteers.
Nolen, Seiler, and Harrison
gutted flood-damaged homes in
the lower Ninth Ward.
As they worked in damaged
homes, the students wore
respirators and suits to protect
them from mold and asbestos.
''The night we drove in, we saw these
mountairts oftrashpiled everywhere.
It was eerie, apocalyptie. ”
Jessie Seiler (Ao8)
Back to Nature
Annapolis campus Johnnies
have long used College Creek as
a source of recreation. Today’s
Johnnies also use it as a source
of study, ever since a iggg
project turned a portion of the
shoreline back to its original
marsh. Now, a $200,000 chal
lenge grant from the Arthur
Vining Davis Foundations will
help return the entire shoreline
to marsh.
College Creek, a Chesapeake
Bay tidal tributary, has for a
long time been considered a
prime candidate for shoreline
restoration. Stabihzing the
shoreline will create natural
filters for stormwater runoff
Using sledgehammers and
crowbars, they gutted the walls
of homes right down to the twoby-fours, tearing out insulation,
paneling, ceilings, and drywall.
Both Seiler and Nolen got very
sick, and Seiler had to move to
another assignment: assisting
the Common Ground legal
team. One project she worked on
included trying to get FEMA
trailers to the city’s homeless.
Thousands of the trailers sat
unoccupied while political and
practical obstacles kept them
from being used.
In addition to the stench of
rotting refuse, the acrid smell of
bleach-used to eradicate mold
and to disinfect tools, boots, and
protective clothing-wiU stay
with the volunteers for a long
time. So will the things they
threw out: a notebook in which
someone had copied half of the
and keep nutrients from the
creek, creating healthy habitats
for vegetation and wildlife.
The iggg restoration
returned approximately onefifth (170 linear feet) of the
shoreline to marsh. The marsh
has been used as a laboratory
field site and has been inte
grated into the laboratory
curriculum. It also provides
opportunities for independent
student and faculty study.
Annapolis tutor Nicholas
Maistrellis describes some of
the work done with the marsh:
“We collect and identify estu
arine organisms, particularly
fish, and marine invertebrates.
{The College.
We identify the plants indige
nous to the marsh and think
about their distributions over
the marsh. This allows us to
raise the question of whether
the plants are restricted prima
rily by physical factors or by
competition with others. This,
in turn, leads to the study of the
changing distribution patterns
of different types of Spartina
alterniflora. The latter problem,
whose study requires the use of
molecular biological tech
niques, has so far been done
only by students working inde
pendently. However, I would
hke to see it included in the
senior lab curriculum.”
St. John’s is now in the plan
ning stages to remove the
remaining 680 feet of structural
John’s College • Winter 2006 }
7
psalms from the Bible, a man’s
photo album with pictures of his
daughter, all of a child’s doUs
and other toys.
Walking through the city,
Nolen and another volunteer
marveled at surreal scenes such
as an abandoned March Gras
float and homes spray-painted
with bright red numbers indi
cating how many dead were
found inside. They spotted a
dead dog that had been rotting
on the street for several months.
To Nolen, it seemed hke a small
but important thing to do
something about that dog.
“Jessie and I went back the
next day and put it in a plastic
garbage bag,” says Nolen. “I was
afraid it was going to fall apart
when we picked it up.”
“That was a long day,” Seiler
adds.
Nolen is taking the spring
semester off to continue working
in the lower Ninth. It would be
difficult for him to study right
now. “Here is a chance to do
some good,” he says.
Seiler plans to go back over
spring break and hopes to spend
next summer volunteering in the
city. She is certain there will still
be plenty of work to do.
—Rosemary Harty
bulkhead and restore this area
to its natural wetland and shrub
buffer. Current funders, in addi
tion to the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations, include the Vernal
W. and Florence H. Bates Foun
dation and the Chesapeake Bay
Trust.
Maistrellis fists the ways the
fully restored marsh will benefit
St. John’s: “As an outdoor site
for scientific investigation of
living things; as a resource that
can be shared with the larger
Annapolis community; as a way
to decrease the amount of sedi
ment entering the creek. This
improves water quality, and
thus the fruitfulness of the
creek in fife forms.” And, he
says, “it is beautiful.”
—SUS3AN Borden (A87)
�{Letters}
World Government
World Federalism was indeed
an interesting movement, but
what if the world government
turns out to be a tyranny? This
would seem to be an obvious
possibility, but Mr. Baratta
[author of The Politics of World
Federation, reviewed in the
Fall 2005 College} and other
proponents of “global
governance” hardly ever seem
to consider it. Today we have,
so to speak, a free market in
governments: if you don’t like
the government you live under,
you can move somewhere else.
True, the price is high, and
some people are unable or
unwilling to pay it, but many
do. Under a world government,
there would be no escape.
Moreover, the hope that the
world government would be a
federal system and therefore
would not meddle in the
internal affairs of its member
states is a feeble one.
In the United States, we
have a “federal” government
that has in effect become a
monolithic national govern
ment, spends more money
every year, and is never reined
in by the states that created it.
A world government, alas,
would do the same.
Geoffrey Rommel,
SF81
Mr. Sarkissian’s Stories
It was with great sadness that I
learned of John Sarkissian’s
death from a recent issue of
The College. John was both a
legend and a good friend to our
generation of students at the
college. He could discuss
Darwin or Leadbelly with
equal facility, as could the
other members (Barbara
Leonard, HA86, Bob Spaeth,
Nick Maistrellis and a few
wannabees) of what we
then called “The Biology
Department.”
What truly set John apart
was his ability to convey the
reassuring thought that life
existed beyond four years of
intense reading and discussion
in the sometimes claustro
phobic Town and Gown
atmosphere in 1960s
Annapolis. John was an
endless source of information
on travel and suggestions for
books that while maybe not
“great” were certainly very,
very good. In the days before
formal graduate school
counseling was available, he
also served as a savvy guide to
what these schools had to offer
and how to put together a
successful application. A lot of
this knowledge was built up
through his ongoing contact
with alumni, and it never failed
to impress me that when
former students returned for a
visit, John was usually the first
tutor they sought out.
But it was the stories, both
those he told and those told
about him that really were a
source of endless enjoyment
and such a gift to us; I can
honestly say that I never heard
him tell the same story twice.
There was the one about the
five jockeys who jumped into
his cab in Chicago, and who
insisted on climbing back and
forth between front seat and
back as they loudly demanded
to be taken “where they could
have a good time.”
And there was his fellow
tutor who wheeled a typewriter
rather than his newborn
around Annapolis in a pram.
Or there was the time, while
serving as a radioman on a
World War II PT boat in the
Pacific (“because I knew how
to use a Japanese dictionary”),
when a torpedo was shot
through the wooden hull of the
ancient craft. The inevitable
Sarkissian punch line was that
the water was so shallow that
they only sank a few feet and
were soon rescued.. .
My favorite was the tale of
Boa Vista. .. John and
colleagues had been traveling
up the Amazon for days
looking for this legendary
beauty of a town with paved
{The College
streets and running water.
“ ‘Beautiful Sight’ my foot,” he
snorted, “nothing but dirt
roads, scrawny chickens, and
flies. But wait, wait,” this last
delivered with leaping
eyebrows and an ash now
longer than its cigarette, “a
Chinese restaurant with the
best Peking Duck I’ve ever
had, no, seriously, better than
in Beijing.”
John and I met up
occasionally, but far too
infrequently, over the past
35 years. One evening at the
old Salaam Supper Club in
D.C. stands out, John in a fez,
banging on some borrowed
bongo drums in time to the
combo’s accompaniment of the
belly dancer. . .
I last saw John a few years
back at an alumni reunion.
He was leading a seminar on
Coriolanus. .. It was one of
those crisp, timeless, October
afternoons when nostalgia is
invigorating and old friends
are new joys. .. We exchanged
reading suggestions. I think at
the time he was devouring
John Buchan’s work or George
MacDonald Frazier’s Flashman
series, or something by
Graham Greene, or, who
knows, maybe all three at once.
I don’t remember what I was
reading but I had been trav
eling overseas and tried to
muster up one or two pale
imitations of a Sarkissian-level
adventure to share with him.
John was one of the most
approachable and delightful
people I have ever known. I
will miss his stories and tips for
good reading, but what I will
miss even more is always
looking forward to hearing
them in person.
Juan B. Ianni,
A70
Euclid with Mr. Swentzell
I haven’t had a lot of contact
with St. John’s in these nearly
20 years since I graduated. But
I have lots of fond memories,
and I know that St. John’s
- St John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
contributes to my sense of
coming from somewhere in
spite of having moved around a
lot in my life.
When I tell people about
St. John’s, I always mention
the books. But of course, it
isn’t really, or mainly even, the
books. It is the conversations
and the relationships they
engendered. Upon hearing the
sad and surprising news of the
death of Ralph Swentzell, what
is brought home to me, in my
sadness, is not the immortality
of books, but us mortals and
the relationships we share.
It was a joy to study Euclid and
be in seminar with Ralph
Swentzell.
I hadn’t spoken to
Mr. Swentzell in all these
years, but I sure carried a
sense of wonder and admira
tion for him. He loved so much
but never played favorites. He
was a big man with a big voice
and a grand enthusiasm.
I am not sure whom to thank
for the gift of Ralph Swentzell,
but for anyone listening, let it
be known that it is one I
cherish.
Liz Barnet,
SF86
The CoZZege welcomes letters
on issues of interest to readers.
Letters may be edited for clarity
and/or length. Those under
500 words have a better chance
of being printed in their
entirety.
Please address letters to: The
College magazine, St. John’s
College, Box 2800, Annapolis,
MD 21404, or The College
magazine. Public Relations
Office, St. John’s College,
rr6o Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
Letters can also be sent via
e-mail to: rosemary.harty@
sjca.edu.
�{History}
9
The St. John’s Trombone Blues
BY Gil Crandall, class of 1936
It has been 73 years since I
enrolled at St. John’s. That
previous June I had graduated
from Annapolis High School and
turned 17 a month later. Like
most teenagers, I was filled with
confidence. Yet I felt a bit intimi
dated as I walked up to
McDowell Hall knowing that I
was just a “Rat,” a holdover
term for freshman from the era
when St. John’s had a military
program.
Being an Annapolis native,
I was a day student, but never
theless subject to the same
“Rat rules” as other freshmen.
We were required to wear rinkydink black-peaked caps, with the
number 36 in orange on the
front, ill-fitting cover that had a
tendency to fall off easily. (I still
have mine, but it is a bit motheaten.) There were other Rat
rules enforced by the student
council, and transgressions
resulted in various punish
ments, including corporal, but
nothing really harmful except to
one’s ego.
It had been my intention to
participate in some extracurric
ular activities. However, I had a
part-time job at Gilbert’s Pharmacy and Soda Fountain on State
Circle, a business owned by my family. I also played the guitar, an
instrument slowly gaining popularity in dance bands. The Swing
era was just then on the rise.
One day, not long after the semester started, I received a
circular advising that the college marching band would welcome
new members. I filled in the accompanying application answering
the question, “What instrument would you like to play?” with
“trombone.” Guitar was not then a marching band instrument,
and to my knowledge, it still isn’t. The director of the college
musical activities was Professor Adolph Trovosky, a longtime
Annapolitan who had emigrated years earlier from Poland or
Germany and had never shed a thick accent. He was regarded as a
fine musician and a kind man with a cheerful disposition.
On the first day of band practice the good professor must have
been somewhat agitated, as he busily distributed instruments and
scores. He handed me a nickel-plated trombone and several
musical scores. Never before had I ever touched a trombone and I
could not read a note of the music. When the time came for the
band to play the first selection, “St. John’s Forever,” I simply sat
with the trombone on my lap.
Professor Trovosky, observing that I was not participating,
stopped the band and asked me why I was not playing. Somewhat
Gil Crandall in 1936; a gig with
OTHER Johnnies helped him buy a
NEW GUITAR.
embarrassed I responded, “Sir, I
can’t play trombone.” With a
look of total astonishment, he
said, “Veil, Mr. Grandall, vy in de
vorld dit you zign up to play der
trombone?” I meekly responded,
“Sir on the application form I
answered the
question, ‘What instrument
would you like to play?’ I would
like to play trombone.’ ”
Visibly confounded. Professor
Trovosky glared at me while the
band members roared with
laughter. Placing the trombone
and sheet music on the gym
bench, I quickly departed as the
band resumed playing.
Fortunately that experience
did not adversely affect my
college career, nor my inauspi
cious future as a guitarist.
The college did not sponsor a
dance band, so I formed a small
off-campus combo dubbed “The
Collegians.” The roster included
myself, two local musicians, and
three other Johnnies: highly
talented Bill Quimby on sax, clar
inet, and flute; robust Bob Murphy on stringbass (both of the class
of 1936); and Bill Herson, class 011935, a mad-man drummer.
The Collegians, sans trombone, gained popularity in the
Annapolis area, playing gigs at various venues with slim financial
reward. The country was enduring the Great Depression. Our
biggest success came when an RKO movie team arrived in
Annapolis to shoot a scene for Shipmates Forever, featuring Dick
Powell and Ruby Keeler. The storyline centered on the Naval
Academy, with Powell as a midshipman and Ruby his sweetheart.
I was lucky to book the Collegians and a few extra musicians to
play “sideline music” for a scene replicating the academy’s
Graduation Ball, shot in Dahlgren Hall. All the band had to do was
to play a few bars of a foxtrot as 50 couples, attired in formal dress,
started dancing. The camera rolled, a dialogue between the two
stars was recorded, and we stopped playing on the director’s cue.
Later in Hollywood, the studio orchestra provided the real music.
That gig was a financial windfall for the Collegians. It paid for
my then-costly ($184.50) Epiphone guitar, with enough left over
to buy a six-dollar derby hat de rigueur for hip musicians.
Professor Trovosky now plays a heavenly harp, as do all the
Collegians, except for me. I strum guitar rather poorly and still
yearn to play the trombone,
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
“SOMETHING
EXTRAORDINARY
HAPPENS HERE”
Santa Fe Welcomes a President
ore than 700 students, alumni, and friends of
St. John’s College filled the gymnasium of the
Student Activities Center for the October 28
Inauguration ceremony for Michael Peters, the
sixth turned
president
the into
Santaa Fe
campus.
Creative decorating
theofgym
venue
fitting for an
occasion of such importance, with faculty in academic robes
joining military officers (friends and former colleagues of Mr.
Peters, a West Point graduate and retired Army colonel) in their
dress uniforms. With music performed by faculty and students,
the ceremony was short on pomp and rich with substance
reflecting the nature of the individual chosen to lead the college.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson set the tone for the evening
with his enthusiastic pledge to support St. John’s College. In a
state where “tradition rests right next to high-paced modernity,”
the governor said, “... it is only fitting that such a place is also
home to a unique institution of higher learning like St. John’s.”
Gov. Richardson expressed admiration for St. John’s College
and particular admiration for Mr. Peters, a retired Army officer
who served in the Vietnam War, former chief of staff at West
Point, and most recently, executive vice president of the Council
on Foreign Relations. Mr. Peters, he said, is a “forward-looking,
visionary. . . committed to developing and strengthening the
bonds that make St. John’s such a special place.”
“Mike Peters is a man who has served his state, his country, and
his community with honor and courage-from soldier, to
diplomat, to statesman. And he has spent the better part of his
career working with young people as an educator-helping to
bring positive influence to the next generation of soldiers,
scholars, innovators, and leaders.”
M
In just a short few months, the governor said, Mr. Peters has
come to know “the unique nature of New Mexico, as well as the
critical importance of higher education here in this state.” As a
college that prepares students to take their place in “an increas
ingly dynamic world,” St. John’s is important to the future of New
Mexico. And under Mr. Peter’s leadership, Gov. Richardson
predicted, the college will thrive.
“The intellectual heft, the diplomatic savvy, and the disci
plined personality he brings to the table will only lead to bigger
and better things for both St. John’s College and New Mexico,”
Gov. Richardson said. “His thirst for learning and his appetite for
aiming higher is contagious-and sure to help motivate and
inspire the students, the faculty, and the family of St. John’s
College to do great things, well into the future.”
Santa Fe Dean David Levine recalled the beginning of the New
Program in Annapolis in 1937 as he considered the future of
St. John’s with Mr. Peters at the helm. The St. John’s Program was
founded at a time when the world was in crisis, he said, when “we
were all to be tested, not only our physical strength, but our moral
fiber.”
A second beginning came in 1964 with the founding of a second
campus, when “a great experiment was undertaken, to see
whether the same college, the same living curriculum, could exist
in two different places.” Today, though “the look and esprit are
quite different” at the two campuses, “what is not different is the
generous spirit of learning, the openness, originality, profundity,
and common purpose.”
Formally installing Mr. Peters as the president of St. John’s
Santa Fe campus another new beginning, one of great promise.
Dean Levine said. The college took on an extended national
{The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
u
Passing the torch: President Michael Peters
AND Former Santa Fe President John Balkcom
(SFGIoo).
made a point of thanking his family for their
support and encouragement: his wife, Eleanor,
and their children, Mike and Rebecca; and his
parents. Max and Peg Peters, “who have been
my models since I was a child.” He also
thanked Moravian College President Ervin
Rokke, a mentor and friend, and the person
who encouraged him to consider life as a
college president-to the good fortune of
St. John’s College.
Inauguration Address
BY Michael Peters
search for a president and “along came a tall, unassuming, articu
late, generous man of the world, who, too, recognized that some
thing extraordinary happens here.”
“And so it is that today we now call Michael Peters to this great
venture of liberal education as its guardian and spokes-man,” he
continued. “We welcome him to our midst and ask him to join us
in our effort to find a place in our complex world for such a bold
vision of education, at once enabling, encouraging, and
ennobling.”
Speaking for the students, senior Shane Gassaway, Polity presi
dent, admired the way Mr. Peters has devoted time to getting to
know students and the Program by taking part in an international
affairs study group, attending dormitory meetings, and becoming
a genuine advocate for students.
“But if there were only one way to win the heart of a Johnnie it
would be to read the books that we read with the same care and
reverence that we show them,” noted Mr. Gassaway. “And this
Mr. Peters has undertaken to accomplish. Beginning with the
January Freshmen last winter, Mr. Peters has attended seminar
every Monday and Thursday night. And now he does the same
with the sophomore class.. . We’ve known him so far as a prospy,
as a January freshman, and now as a sophomore. It is sometimes
said of the January freshmen that those who don’t leave right away
turn out to be the best Johnnies. With such a valuable addition to
our community. I’m hopeful we can say the same thing about
January presidents some day.”
Acknowledging each of the guests and speakers at the cere
mony, particularly students and alumni of the college, Mr. Peters
Eighteen months ago, as I was comfortably
ensconced at the Council on Foreign Relations
in New York, I could not have imagined that I
would be at the podium in the St. John’s College
Student Activities Center in Santa Fe addressing
you as the president. But as a reformed New Yorker, I recall the
insight of that renowned contemporary Western philosopher,
someone who is not included in our curriculum: Yogi Berra. Yogi
is purported to have said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially
about the future.” I can certainly attest to the wisdom of Yogi’s
remark. However, when I walked into a classroom on the
Annapolis campus in July last year and observed the engagement
and commitment of the students and faculty to our distinctive
program, I knew this was the place for me. Everything that has
happened since then-a quick trip to interview in Santa Fe while
trying to adjust to mountain time and 7,000 feet; a mid-winter
move; and getting to know the incredible students, faculty, staff,
alumni and friends of the college-have reinforced my first impres
sion and love for the college.
St. John’s is a community of learners centered on what we call
“the Program,” an all-required curriculum in math, science,
language, social science and philosophy based on study of the
great works in Western thought. This community is enhanced by
our Graduate Institute, which offers two master’s programs,
including one in Eastern Glassies, where students study the key
texts in the Chinese, Japanese, and Indian traditions.
As I said, the students and faculty are a very talented group who
share a commitment to the Program. At St. John’s we don’t put
much credence in reviews and rankings like those of U.S. News
and World Report, but there is one I’d like to share with you that
speaks to the excellence of our faculty and their dedication to
teaching: The Princeton Review. In the most recent edition, the
{The College- St. John ’5 College • Winter 2006 }
�12.
{Inauguration}
liberal education is ourpurpose.
A purpose that is important in and of
itself but abo important four
Republic b to be up to the challenpps
improve our classrooms, create a
it willface in the years ahead.
home for the Graduate Institute,
Santa Fe faculty was rated number
one in the country. What is most
and build a modern auditorium
gratifying about this ranking is
President Michael Peters
that would benefit both the
that it is based not on abstract,
campus and the community.
external criteria but on the opin
Second, connection with the community. St. John’s is a vital
ions of the students themselves. My congratulations and thanks to
part of Santa Fe and New Mexico. Each year we bring more than
the faculty for their great work.
loo of the best students from around the United States and the
The central idea behind the St. John’s program is to help all of usworld to New Mexico. Many of these students remain in the state
students and faculty-learn not what to think, but how to think and
after they leave St. John’s and contribute to New Mexico’s
think deeply. In other words, we are seeking a truly liberal educa
tion. Why are we so single-mindedly dedicated to studying the
economy and welfare.
Of our 8,000 alumni, almost i,ooo are residents of New
hberal arts? In part because, as Vartan Gregorian, the president
Mexico, and of this number more than 30 percent are involved in
of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and former president of
education. Also, more than 50 New Mexico teachers and adminis
Brown University, said, “. . . When people do not know how to
trators have attended our Graduate Institute in the past four
question deeply, to separate fact from fiction, and to give coherence
and meaning to hfe, they can feel a[n] . . . unsettling emptiness in
years, and with programs like Tecolote, we have hosted hundreds
their lives.”
more New Mexico educators on campus.
Through our lectures, art exhibits, musical performances,
With this clear sense of who we are and what we are about, allow
community seminars, and summer programs we bring the
me to highlight the three areas I will focus on in the days ahead.
community to St. John’s and the St. John’s experience “off the
They are: support for learning, connection with the community,
hill.” In addition, our students and staff volunteer their time to a
and heightened visibility.
number of deserving enterprises in Santa Fe.
First, support for learning. With fundamentals as solid as ours,
But we want to do more, and we’ll be looking for ways to
my foremost priority is, as one of my predecessors put it, “to facil
strengthen the connections between St. John’s and our friends
itate the work of the faculty . . . [and] ... to create appropriate
and neighbors in Santa Fe and New Mexico. Part of this effort is a
conditions for learning.” I’m not going to list every aspect this
greater emphasis on attracting qualified New Mexico students to
might entail, but it includes continuing to attract and retain the
highest-quality students, faculty and staff; to provide the need
the college, especially those from traditionally underrepresented
based financial aid necessary to support deserving students; to
groups. Our Opportunity Initiative is designed specifically to
address this issue. We are also hopeful that with the Governor’s
ensure a vibrant campus life, where students can exercise and
develop their mind, body, and spirit. And, of course, it also entails
strong support we can convince the legislature to extend the lottery
scholarships to New
building and main
Mexico residents who
taining first-class facili
attend private colleges in
ties and grounds. In this
the state, hke St. John’s.
regard, I apologize that
My final priority is to
you may have to navigate
heighten the visibility of
around some construc
tion on your way to the
the college and the
reception at the Peterson
campus. For too long we
Student Center. This is a
have been content, as
sign of progress for me.
the New Testament says.
We are also in the
initial planning stages
for a new dorm, so we can
house
a
larger
Mr. Peters thanked
MEMBERS OF HIS FAMILY
percentage of our under
FORTHEIR SUPPORT (LEFT
graduates on campus,
TO right): his wife,
and we are looking for
Evelyn; son, Mike;
ways to expand and
DAUGHTER, ReBECCA;
AND FATHER, MaX.
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Inauguration}
to “keep our light under a bushel basket.” We cannot continue to
do so. Prospective students, friends, the higher education
community-and if it is not too presumptuous, the nation-need to
know about us. Who we are, what we do and how we do it. In part
nership with our sister campus in Annapolis, we need to tell our
story and to be what some have called “a beacon of liberal educa
tion.” Once again to quote Vartan Gregorian, “[HJigher educa
tion . . . must focus on a revival of the liberal arts. Yet, paradoxi
cally, liberal education is in decline just when we need it most....
Liberal education is needed to integrate learning and provide
balance-otherwise students will graduate into a world in which
dependence on experts of every kind will be even more common
than it is today.”
A liberal education is our purpose. A purpose that is important
in and of itself, but also important if our Republic is to be up
to the challenges it will face in the years ahead. For example, as
David Brooks of The New York Times said regarding reform of the
intelligence community, “I’ll believe the intelligence community
has really changed when I see analysts being sent to training
academies where they study Thucydides [and] Tolstoy ... to get a
broad understanding of the full range of human behavior.” Well,
at St. John’s we do study Thucydides and Tolstoy. Not because we
are trying to develop intelligence analysts, but because we believe
that a responsible citizen needs a number of attributes that come
from a liberal education including a “broad understanding of
human behavior.”
To tell the St. John’s story we need the help of everyone herealumni, parents, friends, students, faculty and staff. It deserves to
13
be told-I’m certainly going to do it and I hope you will join me.
As I conclude, you’ll forgive me, but sometimes I just can’t get
beyond my old military training. One aspect of that training was in
a presentation, you should always tell’em what you’re going to tell
them, tell them and tell’em what you told them.
So again, my priorities are: First and foremost, support for
learning; second, connection with the community and last, but
certainly not least, heighten visibihty for the college and the campus.
Blessed with a very sohd foundation, a clear sense of who we are
and what we wish to accomphsh, and the
talent and commitment of the entire
college community, I am confident that
St. John’s best days are ahead. I am
pleased to play a part in fulfiUing this very
promising future. Thank you for demon
strating your support for St. John’s by
being with us today,
Above: Gov. Richardson
CONGRATULATES PRESIDENT PeTERS.
Left: The after-Inauguration party at
THE Peterson Student Center was an
all-inclusive and festive affair that
FILLED BOTH THE DiNING HaLL AND THE
Coffee Shop. Tutor Carey Stickney
(A75) JOINED STUDENTS IN PROVIDING THE
Coffee Shop music.
{The College. St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{Johnnies at Work}
LIVES IN THEIR HANDS
Johnnies Workfor Lasting Beauty
wi Caroline Knapp, SF99
Wiener’s character is with his craft. The patience, elegance, and
hese Johnnies make different
deliberation that characterize boatbuilding are just as evident in
things: timher-frame homes,
his words as in the boat frames all around him.
jewelry, wooden boats, furniture.
He came to the work, Wiener explains, “theoretically.” While
he attended St. John’s, Wiener’s developing interest in the
What they share is the desire to
manual arts was encouraged by tutor William Darkey (class of
build something enduring and
194a), who built his own harpsichord. But it wasn’t until gradu
beautiful and to improve in their
ating that Wiener set himself to training his body “in as rigorous a
I had trained my mind at St. John’s.”
craft with each new project they take on.fashion
Theyasare
The desire for rigor led him to boatbuilding. It was, in his way of
idealistic and practical, enterprising and
imagi
thinking, the “most uncompromising” of the woodcrafts, the one
native, and when they finish a day’s work, they
with the lowest margin for error. “Furniture,” he says, “has to
hold up to the demands of the human body, but ships have to hold
have the pleasure of standing back and regarding
up to the full force of nature out on the water.”
the fruits of their labor.
However, learning to build wooden boats in the United States in
T
Michael Wiener,
SF69
Boatbuilder
Carrying on a conversation with Michael Wiener at the Spaulding
Center for Wooden Boats isn’t for the easily discouraged.
Although the boatyard in Sausalito, Calif, is just big enough for
a half dozen wooden boats in various stages of reconstruction, it’s
humming with activity. Two young men are carting planks from
one neat stack to another, an older man in a straw hat is cranking
a hand-operated crane, and from inside the wood-beamed ware
house comes the hiss of welding equipment. In the middle of the
yard a group of adult students peers up at the partially de
constructed hull of a loo-year-old pleasure boat, Freda. The
atmosphere is of steady, unhurried industry. As head of the yard,
Wiener can’t go more than two minutes-even on his lunch hourwithout being called over to consult on one of the dozens of tasks
at hand.
Wiener answers each question with the same measured, precise
attention. Under his soft cloth cap his expression is affable; his
eyes, while alert to the yard’s activity, are relaxed. When he tells
the story of his journey to this boatyard, it’s clear how consonant
the early 1970s was no easy task. After an unsuccessful search for
a boatyard in Maine, Wiener returned for a time to his native San
Francisco Bay. There he found one yard whose boatbuilders were
“taken aback and flattered” that he would request an apprentice
ship in a dying art. But after he’d put in a year learning the
rudiments of the trade, he recalls the yard’s Irish foreman taking
him aside and asking, “Do you know what you’re doing?” When
he answered in the affirmative, the man said, “Well, my lad,
you’re doing it in the wrong place.”
That recommendation sent Wiener on an international hunt for
a traditional boatyard willing to take on an American apprentice
during the height of the Vietnam War. He found it eventually in
Denmark, where he spent four years as an unpaid apprentice,
studying from master boat builders.
When he returned to the United States, Wiener was well
qualified to build wooden boats, but uncertain whether he wanted
to. Instead, hoping to integrate his academic and practical
training, he went to work for Charles and Ray Eames in their
famous San Francisco design office. The Eames brothers,
intrigued by Wiener’s combination of intellectual and hands-on
experience, soon put him to work on one of their most ambitious
projects, the feature-length science movie Powers of Ten. Wiener
{The College- St. John ’5 College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{JohnniesatWork}
Michael Wiener (SF69)
15
sought rigor in his life and
FOUND IT IN BOATBUILDING.
{The College -Sf. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{JohnniesatWork}
i6
''Given the choice between moreperfect and
more quick, I always choose moreperfect.
Kait Schott,
designed an innovative camera stand and shot the film, which has
since become something of a cult classic.
Though his work with the Eames brothers brought him closer
to the fusion of knowledge he’d envisioned in Mr. Darkey’s
freshman math class. (“Lining up a 2o-foot animation stand, I
used plenty of Euclid,” he explains.) Wiener wasn’t quite satisfied
with that compromise either.
Wiener worked instead as a jack-of-all-trades builder in the tiny
Tomales Bay town of Marshall, co-founded the first organic dairy
west of the Mississippi, and taught himself to build furniture.
Slowly though, the boatyard began to pull him back. “I thought
that when you learn something rigorous like boatbuilding, you
can apply it to anything,” he says. “That’s not true.”
Wiener moved back to Sausalito with his wife and two daugh
ters, joined the Spaulding yard in 1978, and took over yard opera
tions in 2000. In 2002, following the death of its founder, the
yard became a nonprofit, the Spaulding Center for Wooden Boats.
Wiener is on the board of directors.
It would be a pleasure to talk more, find out what he’s reading,
if he finds time to sail, and how he thinks St. John’s has changed.
But the lunch break is over, and Wiener’s eyes are already darting
back to the corner of the yard, where his expertise is needed.
For more information on wooden boat restoration classes at the
Spaulding Centerfor Wooden Boats, call
Kait Schott,
SF91___________________________
Jewelry maker, metal and glass worker
Kait Schott may have spent the years since her graduation
learning fine craftsmanship of the most demanding sort, but for
Johnnies her most impressive achievement is one seemingly unre
lated to her professional life: Schott completed freshman lab five
times, once as a freshman and four times as a lab assistant.
After graduation, rather than taking up a career as a profes
sional baros specialist, Schott returned to her native Minnesota.
There, after spending nearly five years employed as a goldsmith,
she now crafts her own jewelry out of metal and glass.
But all those years in freshman lab helped lead Schott to her
work. Her lab experiences contributed to her interest in working
with actual, not metaphoric, materials. In freshman lab, she
explains, “there’s a struggle with a physical object, with the
tension between you and the physical stuff.”
In freshman lab, the stuff in question is likely to be clay
weights, simple chemical solutions, or cat innards. Eor gold
smiths, the stakes are somewhat higher. But Schott maintains
SF91
that both are expressions of the same contest, “over whether or
not you are going to achieve the eidos of the thing that’s in your
head.”
Having grown up in a family where her mother and grandmotherwere “always making something,” she was inspired by the
wealth of materials available in Santa Ee. While still a student at
St. John’s, she began visiting the bead dealers at the city’s flea
market. Soon she was making simple jewelry for friends and
giving it away. Later, she began selling her work “just to support
the habit.”
Though she had had no professional training at this point,
Schott had already identified one of the key principles drawing
her to work with jewelry. “Jewelry is so personal,” she says. “It’s
expressing a really primitive urge. You find a little trinket that just
has something about it, and you want to take it with you. So you
put it on a string.”
She also realized early that she wasn’t interested in making
jewelry that looked like everyone else’s: “Jewelry is also very
personal in the sense that it’s expressive. The pieces I make are
not particularly narrative, but the person who wears them makes
a decision about what they want to portray.”
Schott’s own decision, after graduating from St. John’s, was to
continue the experiment she had begun as a student, “to really
engage the physical stuff of the world.” Her first steps took her to
the San Francisco area, where she took metalsmithing classes at
the Richmond Art Center. Armed with new technical skill, she
moved back to Minneapolis, found a glass workshop, and eventu
ally attended trade school for metalworking.
There, she learned to cast, polish, solder, and set stones in an
atmosphere that encouraged neither creativity nor discussion.
Though, she muses, “it was like St. John’s in that everything was
laid out for you.”
After graduating from trade school, she worked for four-and-ahalf years as a hired “pair of hands” in a large jewelry shop
specializing in complex and expensive gold wedding bands. The
work was challenging, but not creative, and it demanded speed
and skill. “As a goldsmith, there was a constant battle of will
between me, the stuff, and the clock,” she says. While the first
two elements of that equation were familiar, the third posed more
difficulty: “Given a choice between more perfect and more quick,
I always chose more perfect. I do have an appreciation of having
some efficiency and speed. But I also know that there are limits to
how fast I’m ever going to do something and still enjoy it.”
In 2003, Schott quit work as a goldsmith, moved to an artists’
co-operative, and decided to concentrate on her own work. “I
want to sit back and think for a while again about what I really
wanted to make,” she explains.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Johnnies at Work}
Lately, that has led her to work extensively with glass; she’s
fascinated hy the way that glass responds to heat. “I think most
people can anticipate what metal will he hke when it’s heated. But
glass becomes really fluid when you work with it. It’s just magic.
The material itself is a seduction.”
The new work pattern has also given her time to return to her
roots. With a local alumni chapter, she recently revisited Goethe’s
“On the Metamorphosis of Plants.” At this distance from
freshman year, she sees in the essay a meditation on the artist’s
struggle. “It’s a great metaphor for feeding yourself creatively,
for developing into something new and different,” she says.
“The sense of striving that Goethe seems to ascribe to the plant is
hke the struggle to take the world and try to making something
out of it.”
Kait Schott’s work, including a recent series ofplantforms in glass
inspired by Goethe, can be viewed at www. kaitschott. com.
Ben Shook, SFoo
Carpenter
Ben Shook explains his decision to become a craftsman as though
it were composed, like a wooden joint from one of the chairs he
builds, of two separate pieces which fit together perfectly;
“St. John’s left me with student loans and some inextricable
idealism. I probably already had the idealism. So I had to make
a living.”
Shook’s tone is self-mocking, but he’s perfectly serious about
In her work, Kait Schott (SF91) struggles with
“the eidos of the thing that’s in your head.”
17
materials and
the idealism. It kept him up nights as he was beginning his
apprenticeship, practicing in his own shop the skills he’d
observed during the day. And today it’s the driving force behind
the thriving small business he runs out of his Portland home.
Shook felt the first stirrings of interest in fine woodworking
while visiting a museum. He spent the year after his graduation
traveling and working in France. One day, he visited the Musee
des Arts et Metiers, the Paris museum devoted to the finest prod
ucts of French craftsmanship and engineering from the Middle
Ages to the present. The masterworks in wood, stone, and metal
that he saw there convinced him that “the depths to which one
could take this craft are unfathomable.”
Shook returned to Dayton, Wash., found a job as a bartender,
and bought some tools. Working from books and studying furni
ture, he began to build what he now calls “rustic things,” roughhewn desks and bookcases made using wood salvaged from old
barns. He still had no formal training, but the results were
compelling. “One day, this woman who owned a gallery came by,”
he recalls. “And she bought everything, about ao pieces. She just
said, T’ll take all of it for my shop.’”
Encouraged by the sudden success. Shook decided to get
serious. In aooa he apprenticed with a French master carpenter
in Washington, working for low wages and “asking him questions
every second there wasn’t a machine on.” By the end of the year.
Shook had learned the basics of timber-frame construction and
{The College • St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�i8
{Johnnies at Work}
felt ready to strike out
on his own.
Today, Shook em
ploys two assistant
woodworkers in a
large shop attached to
his Portland home.
His business has
grown rapidly in the
last few years, mostly
through word of
mouth. Working by
hand and with power
tools, he and his assis
tants spend at least
one month on each
major furniture piece.
The shop spent nearly
half of last year furnishing a whole house for just one client.
Slowness is one of the qualities Shook appreciates in his work,
one of the principles he’s distilled from his beginnings in the
craft. “Working with wood requires a different orientation to
time,” he says. “The time is so great with some projects. You just
have to let go of the male perception of working at something from
beginning to end. You have to think in days and weeks. You have
to have a real patience for letting glues set up, for just learning to
let something sit.”
Shook’s latest passion is building chairs. “I’m getting really
into them,” he confesses. “Chairs are the most human kind of
furniture, the thing that you put your body in rather than on.” The
chair design he’s working on now has no metal parts; the seat is
hand-shaped. Its secret. Shook says, is a special central joint orig
inally designed by master builder Sam Malouf: “It’s such a beau
tiful and simple joint, and it’s so strong.”
Joints are, of course, the heart of the furniture maker’s craft, and
Shook has spent some time considering them. At the moment, it
seems to him to be a question of creating union. “The marriage of
two pieces of wood in a joint is such a delicate and precise thing,”
he says. “And when it’s done right, it’s a forever marriage.”
If Shook sounds as though he’s been considering words closely
as well, that’s no accident either. When he isn’t working in the
shop, one of his interests is writing poetry, which he says is “sort
of like making furniture.”
Visit WWW. benshook. com.
Ben Shook(SFoo)
WORKS ON A CHAIR,
“the most human
KIND OF FURNITURE,”
IN HIS Portland shop.
Jordan Finch
(SFoo)
Builder
Jordan Finch’s career
as a builder of beau
tiful homes has its
roots in his junior
year at St. John’s,
when he experienced
a revelation. Having enjoyed woodworking as a hobby, he knew he
wanted to build things-big things, beautiful things-after gradu
ating from the college.
“I had this idea that I wanted to build cathedrals,” he says. “I
went on this long search to learn about them, but it never quite
panned out-there just weren’t many cathedrals being built.”
However, Finch has found something nearly as satisfying in
building timber-frame homes, characterized by soaring ceilings,
heavy exposed beams, craftsmanship, and durability. He is
rapidly becoming a master of the same post-and-beam construc
tion methods that contributed to the majesty of Europe’s great
cathedrals.
Timber framing has been practiced for centuries, but in modern
times, stick-built construction-faster and cheaper-has prevailed,
“until the 1960s, when hippies began reviving the craft,” says
Finch.
Picture an old-fashioned Amish barn raising and you’ll get a
sense of the work Finch does. Without a few dozen men to raise
the frame that serves as the skeleton of the house. Finch relies on
the modern crane. But in every other way-the precise fitting of
tenon into mortise, securing joined timbers with pegs of solid
wood-Finch uses time-honored and traditional methods to build
homes. “There’s a great geometry to it all. When you’re building
these homes, you have to hold this visual image in your head. It’s
like doing Euclid in 3-D,” he says.
Finch took up carpentry as a teenager, and he has been
perfecting his craft since graduating from St. John’s in 2000.
While spending junior year in Annapolis, he stole time from his
studies to build a boat. That summer, the college’s Placement
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�{Johnnies at Work}
office (now Career Services) helped Finch find a job with Steve
Whalen (SF83), who had a carpentry business in Southwest
Harbor, Maine. “I told him I was attending St. John’s and knew
how to use a hammer and he said, ‘come on up.’ ” After gradua
tion, Finch served a two-year apprenticeship with Vicco von Voss,
a custom furniture maker in Chestertown, Md. “It’s probably
been the highpoint of life in craftsmanship so far,” he says.
Von Voss began designing his own timber-frame home, and
Finch contributed his construction expertise to the project. Along
the way, he recognized that he had found a solid substitute for
cathedrals. When his apprenticeship ended. Finch found a job
with Lancaster County Timber Frames in Pennsylvania. “I had the
basic skills, but I wanted to get faster,” he explains. “There are
shops like these throughout the country and a lot of them do
beautiful work, but it really is high tempo.”
Finch’s “meditative” methods weren’t a good fit with highpressure shops, so he took his tools and went out on his own as an
itinerant joiner, subcontracting for other timber framers on proj
ects in Georgia, Florida, Virginia, and Massachusetts. After a year
and a half of honing his craft on the road. Finch moved to Virginia
to marry Quinby Owen (Aoa) and settle down in the Shenandoah
Valley town of Mount Jackson.
19
When Quinby’s parents needed to find a builder for their home,
their new son-in-law talked them into hiring him. It was his first
opportunity to design a home and to build it from start to finish.
Never mind the r6-hour days; it’s been well worth it, he says.
“We raised the frame on Oct. 33, 2004. I’ve been involved in
quite a few raisings, and there’s always a sense of expectation and
eagerness in the air, but this time, it was really satisfying,” he says.
There is a wholeness to the work that appeals to Finch each time
he takes up his tools. “I’ve gone from milling the tree to sanding
something to a mirror polish. Sometimes you smell like a
chainsaw, other days you need a surgeon’s touch just to take a
sliver of wood away,” he says. “That really gives me a sense of
fulfillment-it feels natural and complete.”
People are surprised to hear that timber framing is a green
building method, he says. “Timber framing does take larger,
mature trees,” he acknowledges. “But if a building will stand for
300 years or more, that’s a responsible use of materials.”
Happy to create anything out of a beautiful piece of wood. Finch
still makes furniture and recently accepted a commission for a
dining room table. With Quinby expecting a baby when he
started his business. Finch named his shop Finch and Sons Fine
Woodworking. Since the arrival of daughter Aurelia, now almost
one, he’s had to reconsider the name.
“How does Finch Family Woodworkers
sound?”
For questions on timber-frame construc
tion, contact Finch at Jordanafinch®
yahoo.com or at 540-333-0034.
—Rosemary Harty
Quinby (Aoa), Jordan (Aoo), and Aurelia
Finch, in the home Jordan is building in
Virginia.
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�ao
{The Program}
SMALL WAVES IN
A TRANQUIL SEA”
Melville, Literature, and the St. Johns Reading List
wi Rosemary Harty
ow many Johnnies have read-or even
heard oi-The History of Henry
Esmond?. Thackeray’s novel, the
story of Henry and his love for
Beatrix, was on the list of hooks that
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan
assembled for the New Program, first
published in The Bulletin ofSt. John’s
College. It was the Bulletin that in
1937 set out the specifics of the Program for prospective students
and the rest of the world, and here, the college’s criteria for
choosing a classic was defined. The first two involve magnitude:
“A great book must have been read by the largest number of
persons”; for clarity, works by Plato and the Bible are mentioned
in this regard. The work also must offer the possibility of many
different interpretations. It must “raise the persistent unanswer
able questions about the great themes in European thought.” And
the final two criteria: it must be “a work of fine art” and a
“masterpiece of the liberal arts.”
These criteria have guided choices for the college’s reading list
for nearly 70 years. A self-study conducted by Annapolis faculty
for reaccredidation two years ago acknowledged that, “although
there is broad agreement about our reading list, certain authors,
texts, and text selections regularly come up for discussion. The
Senior Seminar list, which contains the most recently written
books, is always the most controversial. Even here, however,
upon annual review of the Program by the Instruction
{The College.
Committee, there is far more stability than change, and our
concerns amount to small waves in a largely tranquil sea.”
Changes-major and minor-to the list come slowly and with
careful deliberation. This is not done to preserve a canon, but
rather, a continuum, as the self-study report states: “Year after
year, for at least two hours on Monday and Thursday nights,
students and tutors discuss the same books in the same way with
the sense that here, in the thinking, speaking, and listening that
go on in the Seminar, the College is most alive and most itself.”
A number of books read for seminar have dropped off that first
list included in the Bulletin, including Goethe’s Faust, Fielding’s
Tom Jones, and Corneille’s Le Cid. Moby-Dick-'wXdCti many
faculty and alumni would consider a perfect match with that 1937
definition of a great book-has been out of the list for some time.
It hasn’t been read in seminar in Annapolis for 3r years and has
made sporadic appearances on the Santa Fe seminar list. In recent
years Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner have joined the
senior seminar list at the urging of some tutors and over the
objections of others.
Considering suggestions and objections from tutors and
students is the work of the Instruction Committee, comprising
13 tutors (six from each campus), the deans of both campuses,
and the two presidents as ex-officio members. The IC is respon
sible for the program of instruction, and with it, has the power
to add or remove a book from the reading list. Changes are
made by consensus, not by majority rule, and also are governed
by transferability.
St. John’s College ■
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{The College -St John’s College • Winter 2006 }
ai
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{TheProgram}
''Chiefamong these motives was the
overwhelming idea ofthe great whale hitnself
Such aportentous and mysterious monster
roused all my curiosity ”
Ishmael
Annapolis tutor Anita Kronsberg (A79) says the committee
considers factors such as “whether a book has the kind of weight
and substance” worthy of study and discussion, and whether it
connects in interesting ways to other books on the reading list.
Each year, the committee reviews reports submitted by the tutors
who served as the recorders for their seminars. These reports help
the committee decide if a certain reading is working well in
seminar, and along with specific requests, factor in decisions to
change the list.
When a book comes off the reading list, it’s usually to make
room for another. There are sacrifices and sometimes compro
mises, because in the harsh light of reality, “we can’t read all great
books,” Kronsberg says. The nature of the college’s Program
(roughly chronological) means that fewer changes will be made
when Ancient Greek and medieval works are concerned.
A few years ago, the committee made an earnest attempt to find
room for The Sound and the Fury, “but we couldn’t put it any
where in the seminar where the students could read it,” she says.
“It’s a very beautiful book, some of Faulkner’s finest writing,”
Kronsberg says, almost wistfully. “The approach he takes is not
like anything else we read.”
Don Quixote is one of a handful ofvery long novels Johnnies are
asked to read in the Program, most timed for summer or winter
breaks to allow time to read and ponder before seminar meets. But
discussion is still condensed to two meetings on books like War
and Peace and Middlemarch.
It’s not entirely satisfying, but that’s another reality of the
Program: “We acknowledge that St. John’s is a place where some
books get a first reading,” says Kronsberg. Whether it’s a long
novel, a complex poem, or a passage from Kant, returning to the
work provides a fuller view.
Santa Fe tutor Frank Pagano says the IC on his campus usually
concentrates on two years of the Program at a time: freshman and
junior years, or sophomore and senior. When the committee
makes changes to the list, it’s often in the interest of choosing
books that “work well in seminar.”
“We want books to be great,” says Pagano, a tutor of aa years.
“That’s easy to experience, but hard to nail down.” To illustrate
his point, Pagano points to difficulties in reading Supreme Court
decisions for seminar. While important, they don’t quite work as
Program books, in his opinion. “Inevitably they require historical
background-that’s a sign that something isn’t great,” he says.
In Santa Fe about five years ago, the IC decided to add
Maimonides (Guidefor the Perplexed} to the sophomore reading
list. “It’s a great book in itself. But the second reason it works in
seminar is that you have two traditions that the Bible represents,
and we had no theology that was Jewish.” Maimonides also speaks
to other Program authors, says Pagano: “He’s picked up on in
junior year by Spinoza, especially.”
Although changes to the reading list have not been monu
mental ones, the Instruction Committee could vote by consensus
to remove Plato’s Republic-Mt^My unlikely, but by the rules
governing the committee, not impossible. “The thought is we
could change anything,” Pagano notes.
However, substantial changes to philosophy are pretty rare.
“They’re all part of a tradition, and it’s very hard to take one out
and put one in,” he says. “If you’re going to do Hegel and not
do Kant, you’re not going to be able to see who Hegel is
responding to.”
Pagano would like to see Johnnies read Absalom, Absalom—“a
book that encapsulates the American tradition better, as well as
the Southern problem.” He’d choose Faulkner over Moby-Dick,
which he finds interesting, but not as compelling.
“I delivered a speech on Moby-Dick in high school,” he adds as
a side-note, “and that speech was a bit of a bomb.”
Moby-Dick first appeared on the college reading list for seniors
in 1952-53. It was read for many years in the 1950s and made brief
reappearances in Annapolis and Santa Fe, most recently in 2003.
It lives on in preceptorials, yet some tutors think it’s a shame not
all students read the work because it is the type of work-like so
many books that remain on the Program-that needs to be
discussed to be understood.
How did Melville’s novel first get the boot? The prevailing
legend in Annapolis is that too many students were writing essays
on the book. With only a list of prize-winning essays available to
check, the memory of veteran tutors was consulted.
“Oh, it’s absolutely not apocryphal,” says Eva Brann (HA89).
“I distinctly remember one year there were at least 10 essays
written on the book.”
Tutor Malcolm Wyatt (HA03), who joined the college in 1958,
recalls that too many bad essays were being written about MobyDick. “The temptation of allegory was too much for students-the
white whale, why is he white, the peg leg-itwas away to grind out
a senior essay without much serious thought,” he says.
In Santa Fe, the book was last read in senior seminar in the
spring of 2003, but it wasn’t a success in the eyes of tutor Howard
Fisher. That may be because it was read while seniors were writing
their senior essay. (In Annapolis, seminar is suspended with all
{The College- St. John's College • Winter 2006 }
�{TheProgram}
as
“ .. ril chase him round GoodHope, and
round the horn, and round the norway
maelstrom, and roundperditions
flames before Igive him up.
Ahab
Other classes for the writing period, while Santa Fe students meet
for seminar for part of the time.) “As wonderful as the book is, the
seminars were not a success,” Fisher says. “I had been in a senior
seminar or two in Annapohs where we read it as part of the
Program, and it seemed to me that we had as good a discussion as
any other book. It is episodic, and that makes it difficult to sustain
a unified conversation, but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible.”
Most years, on one campus or the other, Moby-Dick is offered in
preceptorial, and it’s a popular offering. Annapolis tutor
Jonathan Tuck tried to lead a precept on the novel a few times,
only to find other tutors got there first. “In some ways, having
frequent preceptorials honors Moby-Dick more, because it gets
the reading it needs,” Tuck offers.
Santa Fe Thtor Claudia Honeywell loved the preceptorial she
led on the book. “Oh, would that it could be on the Program,” she
says. “At the time I chose it for precept, I was really interested in
it. I felt like it was my discovery-T’ve found this great book, let’s
read it together.’ ”
For Honeywell, Moby-Dick more than meets the college’s
criteria for a great book: “It’s endlessly fascinating. You’re never
done reading it, and there’s no way to be done reading it. Even as
you’re formulating the line of interpretation, you’re left in an
uncomfortable place-just as Ishmael is. The book has no
apparent resolutions.”
It was “a bummer” that the novel came off the reading list,
Honeywell says, because “we don’t have it as an element of our
common discourse. It’s a book that can really accompany us
through the moral uncertainty of life. There’s the famous passage
where Ahab talks about how human life is lived, that men hide
behind a pasteboard mask if they’re there at all. I think about that
now and then, I see situations that trigger memories of it.”
As one of their rewards for finishing the novel, Annapolis tutor
Nathan Dugan invited his students a few years ago to a party,
complete with clam chowder. Dugan had read it for the first time
just a year before and was eager to read Moby-Dick with students.
The preceptorial was productive, but it took hard work to make
such a vast book the subject of coherent discussions, he notes.
“The good thing is that you can go through very slowly and spend
a lot more time on the parts,” he says. “The difficult thing is
that you can’t require everyone to read 1,000 pages before you
start. But with the right of questions, a glimpse of the whole can
come out.”
What the novel would add to the program as a whole is a
portrait of human beings as seekers and interpreters of symbols
{The College.
and meaning, Dugan adds, something that relates well to Platonic
dialogues Johnnies read as freshmen. “In the end it’s telling us
something about why we need to be self-aware,” he says.
Dugan sees no compelling reason Melville’s tale must be on the
reading list. And yet, he allows, “fife would be more full” if he
could teach Moby-Dick and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Having taught two preceptorials on the book, Annapolis tutor
David Townsend acknowledges the impracticality of Moby-Dick
as a seminar reading. Yet in his view, the novel is “one of the dozen
great novels ever written.” The book confronts themes of man and
nature, hierarchy and obedience, freedom and equality.
“It addresses the struggle to build a community and how
essential that is,” he says. “It points out that you don’t have an
individual self outside of the community. It’s eclectic and diverse
in the cultures that it depicts. And it’s also contemporary in that
it’s one of the first books to address a global economy and the
psychological and moral effects of commerce.”
In addition to the length, one problematic issue in Melville’s
tale is an absence of women, something that can’t be said
about Middlemarch. Townsend would not want to see Eliot’s
novel sacrificed for another fictional work. “It’s a very rich and
coherent story, more manageable in two seminar discussions”
than Moby-Dick.
St. John’s is not trying to establish a canon, even if it seems that
way to outsiders, says Townsend. And yet the college gets letters
and e-mails from those who look to “the great books college” to
decide what “great” books they should read. A few years ago, a
group of Canadian doctors asked for the reading list. Most
recently, an Iowa man wrote to ask for a copy of the list; he
planned to ask his local library to post it for patrons.
“Because we don’t have time to read everything, it often seems
that if someone’s not on our reading list, it’s because we’ve found
that the work is not as important,” says Townsend. That’s not the
case, he adds. “These books at this moment in time are the ones
that work well in conversation for our community.”
Honeywell expresses a similar sentiment. “There are so many
friends out there, and we can only invite so many to the party, yet
you still think about your friends. We form our own relationships
with books, and they are like friends.”
To find out what Johnnies are reading today, visit the St. John's
Website: www.stjohnscollege.edu.
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2.4
PLATO, ARISTOTLE,
BALDWIN?
The College magazine asked readers to suggest books they would
like to see on the St. John’s reading list. The question drew an
interesting variety ofresponses, with essays, novels, and works of
philosophy suggested. Here are some ofthe offerings:
Notes ofa Native Son would be a happy addition to the senior
seminar list, perhaps following close upon the Lincoln and Faulkner
readings.
—Kevin Schnadig,
SF98
Death in Venice
Notes ofa Native Son
The playwright August Strindberg once wrote about his experience
of reading the complete works of Balzac, something over 50
volumes. When he had finished he felt, as he tells us, that he had
lived an entire life condensed into the space of a couple of seasons.
And that his own life now, whatever remained of it, took on the
quality of a kind of second life, a strange addition to the life he had
lived vicariously through the great author.
There are other kinds of works, however, not oeuvres but single
volumes, that leave their readers with a much different impression.
They do not make us feel that we have passed through the entirety of
a life but rather, and this is their particular strength, convey to us a
sense, both tortuous and exhilarating, of the essential incomplete
ness of life, of time fraught with interruptions, cut into so many
fragments of unclear and mutilated histories, and interwoven with a
dizzying variety of fictions and hes.
The book 1 have in mind is James Baldwin’s Notes ofa Native Son,
a collection of essays first published in 1955. These essays, brilliantly
incorporating original insights into the works of Shakespeare,
Dante, Milton, Faulkner, Kafka, and so many others, deal primarily
with two themes, both literary and philosophical in scope: the
encounter between human beings with different cultures, different
ways of thinking and different superficial appearances; and the
experience, individual as well as collective, of being an exile,
geographically as well as psychologically. Notes ofa Native Son is,
but is also much more than, a book about the experience of black
Americans in the aoth century. Speaking of this experience,
Baldwin writes that “the depthless alienation from oneself and one’s
people is, in sum, the American experience.” But it is also, one
comes to realize while reading these essays, an essentially philo
sophical experience. For there is a certain kind of understanding
that arises only from the point of view of an exile. St. John’s students
and tutors will immediately call to mind the cases of Socrates,
Christ, Dante, Spinoza, and Frederick Douglass, to name a few. It is
the moment when all that is familiar becomes violently and threat
eningly unfamihar, and one is compelled, if one has a penchant for
intellectual honesty, to re-evaluate those most fundamental notions
of self and other, truth and lies.
As I believe St. John’s is at bottom an attempt to cultivate these
moments of understanding by passionate discussion of ideas, I think
I first encountered this book during my freshman year at Kenyon
College, an experience which instantly changed my life. I have
re-read it several times since... and after each reading, as in all the
works on the reading fist, I understand more, both about the book
and about the experience of being human, particularly that of falling
in love. It would be wonderful if all St. John’s students had the oppor
tunity to read and discuss Death in Venice.
I suggest this book for three reasons. First, the reading list
contains very little 20th-century fiction, and Mann’s tale is certainly
one of the best examples, written before the First World War and the
emergence of Modernism, yet the style and tone appear to signal the
approach of the movement. Second, Death in Venice is short enough
to be discussed in one seminar class, while containing enough chal
lenging material to provoke a thoughtful, lively conversation.
Third, and most importantly, the subject matter, the elderly
von Aschenbach’s erotic longing for the teenaged Tadzio, is
guaranteed to spark debate, especially in light of current events. At
the same time, however, it will require students to revisit their discus
sions of ancient Greek notions of eros, especially as expressed in
Plato’s Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus. Indeed, Death in Venice
maybe viewed as a 20th-century commentary on the Platonic idea of
love, even incorporating sections of the relevant dialogues into the
novella. This work serves as a transition of sorts, from the values and
beliefs of ancient Greece to those of the modern world, and for all
these reasons, it would make an excellent addition to the reading fist.
—Charles Green, AGIoa
The Decameron
It’s absolutely imperative that we add Giovanni Boccaccio’s
14th-century masterpiece. The Decameron, to the sophomore
curriculum. Boccaccio’s tales of true love and high adventure (and
depraved monks, which are what everyone who reads The
Decameron seems to remember best) will provide a wonderful relief
to sophomores recently completing their study of St. Anselm and
Aquinas. Rather than depicting how people ought to behave in an
ideal world-a “city of God” so to speak- The Decameron depicts
how they behave in the real world, wherein people are more apt to
pursue love, and sex, and wealth than divine absolution. As such we
shall be reassured that not everyone in the Middle Ages spent all
{The College. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
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their time woefully
recounting their sins
and attempting to
understand God’s
power and majesty.
But of course,
perhaps the greatest
case for adding
The Decameron to
the curriculum is
Brother B,obert, who
has long feared the
deduction of his
beloved Rabelais
from the Program
list. Obviously, as
The Decameron is
about IO times dirtier
than anything that can be found in Pantagruel and Gargantua it
would be wholly illogical to deduct Rabelais from the curriculum
and leave Boccacio on. Thus, the fears of one of our oldest and
most respected tutors will at long last be assuaged, and sophomores
will have gotten a delectable new read which provides a different,
lighthearted, and secular perspective on the Middle Ages.
—Jennifer Wright, ao8
The Rule of St. Benedict, The Philosophy ofFreedom
I have always thought that the jump from Augustine to Aquinas is
too large, a thousand years, and that The Rule of Saint Benedict
would fit nicely, as it was much read and often observed in between,
so preserving literature from one era for the next.
The aoth century is the serious question.. . Which Western
writers of the aoth century will be studied through the aist?
How many thinkers have given new direction to painting, sculpture,
dance, speech, music, drama, agriculture, finance, medicine,
religion, and education? There is only one whose insights into
embryology, physiology, astronomy, geology, botany, and zoology
wfil guide fruitful research for generations.
Rudolf Steiner has put before us in a new light so many subjectsepistemology, moral technique, meditative practice, evolution of
consciousness, social life-that the prospect of rethinking every
thought we hold may keep us from approaching his books.
Yet the faculty of St. John’s is under pressure to study anthroposophy from at least two directions. Advances in physics are rapidly
overwhelming Cartesian dualism. Philosophy cannot disregard
science. New generations of students will expect their college
professors to understand the foundations of their experience...
Die Philosophic der Freiheit (1894) is the best introduction.
There are at least three English translations... Rudolf Steiner’s
contribution to Western thought is placed in the same rank as the
work of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In The Philosophy of
as
Author James
Baldwin belongs on
THE READING LIST,
SAYS AN ALUMNUS.
Freedom, Steiner
leads the reader, by
means of pure
thinking, to the
source of his
knowledge. Having
made that effort, one
is competent to eval
uate his statements,
which the faculty of
St. John’s will shortly
be obliged to do.
—Lisa S. Turner, parent
(Douglas Turner, A04)
Atlas Shrugged____________________________________________
While scorned by many academic philosophers, the book has had a
tremendous impact on popular perceptions of philosophy,
including among many highly educated people. In addition, the
book has gained at least some ground in academia. There are a
handful of colleges where some philosophers embrace Ayn Rand,
and many others where at least short selections from her books are
included in survey courses on ethics and political philosophy.
I recently re-read the book after more than ao years. My
perceptions have evolved and changed, and I was dismayed to
discover how flawed much of the writing is. In particular, Rand’s
“bad guys” are drawn as comic-book characters. Even so, there is
much that is compelling in her writing, and the philosophical
heroes of the novel give some very thought-provoking speeches.
The ideas in the novel span the entire range of philosophical
issues, from metaphysics and epistemology to ethics, politics, art,
and even the role of sexuality in human relations.
Possibly the best reason: With the lone exception of Aristotle,
whose metaphysics and logic she embraces, Rand attacks virtually
the entire canon of Western philosophical thought, from Plato to
Descartes to Hume and Kant, right up to the present day post
structuralists and post-modernists. One of the best lines in the
whole novel, found in the long Galt speech, is: “The choice is still
open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to
stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a costly historical
error, to declare: T am; therefore I will think.’”
The purpose of reading a book at St. John’s is to provoke lively
discussion. And particularly for seniors in the undergraduate
program, I can’t imagine a better book to challenge the entire
body of work they have read in earlier years of the Program. . .
{The College. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
—Steve Oppenheimer, AGIoa
�^6
{Homecoming}
O, PIONEERS!
The Class ofigss Returns
BY Rosemary Harty
oyce Kittel Wilson (class of 1955)
had a lot to learn from men like
Jacob Klein, J. Winfree Smith, and
Curtis Wilson. She also remem
St. John’s-particularly her classmate,
bers some of the things she learned
Anita (Jane) Gerber Denison.
from women-the first to attend
“Jane taught me how to smoke,” Wilson
recalls.
“I just don’t remember that,” Denison
says.
Cigarettes were an ever-present prop for
students and tutors alike. “We could
smoke in class, and most of the students
and tutors did,” Wilson recalls,
Denison and Wilson were catching up in
the home of Sam (class of 1954) and Emily
(class of 1955) Kutler, who hosted a
Saturday-afternoon luncheon at their
home during Homecoming Weekend. As
with most of the conversations around the
room, the subjects alternated between
“what are you doing now?” and “do you
remember this?”
Homecoming is always festive, lively,
and full of memories, but this year it was
especially nostalgic, as members of the
Class of 1955-the first to include women-returned for their 50th
anniversary. The class had 48 members, nine of whom have
passed away. Sixteen members of the class attended their reunion,
traveling from far and wide. They smiled at imitations of Jacob
Klein’s accent or memories of President Richard Weigle’s
attempts to keep the female citizens of St. John’s safe from bad
influences. They were pioneers, and they had pioneers’ stories,
such as the “open door” rule required for men and women to be in
the same dorm room at the same time. They also talked about
getting their tutors and male classmates used to having women in
class and on campus.
As Wilson puts it, the men of St. John’s did not accept the inva
sion of women quietly. “They went kicking and screaming into the
fray,” she says.
Denison graduated from Towson High School, north of Balti-
J
{The College
They encountered many challenges, but Joyce Wilson and Jane
Gerber Denison ( both class of 1955) share fond memories of
BEING the first WOMEN TO ATTEND St. JoHn’s CoLLEGE.
more, and she won a scholarship to attend St. John’s. She made it
through three years at the college and found it rigorous, chal
lenging, and sometimes overwhelming. “The college was so much
smaller then. You had 15 in a seminar, and there was no way you
could hide. If you weren’t prepared, everyone knew it,” she says.
“The oral exams, and the don rags-I dreaded those like poison.”
She left close to the end of junior year and returned to
Baltimore to find work. But she was summoned back to Annapolis
by Jacob Klein, then dean of the college. “I went to his house.
He was a very persuasive man. He wanted me to come back, and I
did, but I was very confused, and I left again.”
- St John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�{Homecoming}
A Toast to Toasts
women cloy/ The appetites they feed: but she-this college
makes hungry/ where most she satisfies.’”
It’s a fine tradition: at the end of the Saturday-night
Homecoming banquet, alumni raise a glass in honor of their
classmates and in gratitude to the college. More recent classes
go first, paving the way for the Johnnies who studied in the
old program. Here are a few of the sentiments offered this year
in Annapolis:
Graduate Institute, all years, Linda Stabler-Talty
(SFGI76): “We’ve always heard it said that the Graduate Insti
27
tute is a refined version of the program. And we do admit that
we are an amorphous group, we don’t have [typical] reunions.
We dare say our wise perspective has helped us understand
what St. John’s means to all of us together.. .. We raise our
glasses to this collective enterprise of St. John’s College.”
Class of 1995, Zena Hitz : “At reunions, we tend to think a lot
about the past, partly because we’re St. John’s alumni, and
we’re sentimental. . . . What I’ve enjoyed about Homecoming is
seeing what people are doing now, what their lives are like,
meeting the people they love, hearing about their work,
finding out what they’re thinking about-so I would like to raise
a toast to the class of 1995: Our lives, our love, our work.”
Class of 1980, Ken Ross: “I know some of my classmates
knew me as a very shy person in r98o and so they elected me
anyway. I really enjoyed meeting my old friends and making
new friends here. And to this very special college-here’s to the
class of 1980!”
Class of 1975, Jim Jarvis: “One of the most delightful things
about being at a 30th reunion is to realize that we’re now the
reunion where most of the people have gray hair-which is
great. And to see that so many of these people are so amazingly
accomplished, and have not lost their love for books and ideas.
All of us I think would say about St. John’s College, what
[Domitius Enobarbus] says in Antony and Cleopatra'. ‘Age
cannot wither her, nor custom stale/Her infinite variety: other
Denison went on to a marriage, a rich family fife that included
five step-children, and a satisfying career as a professional editor.
But she can still see Klein, who died in 1978, as if it were yesterday.
“He always had this little twinkle in his eye.”
Yet Denison left St. John’s feeling well prepared for the future,
and she treasures the memories she took with her.
“At that time, it was a very small community, and all of us
women were new to it. We were close, and that was nice,” she says.
If Denison left because she was young and unsure of her path in
fife, Wilson left for another reason many college-age women
encountered: marriage. She married Gerald Wilson (class of
1956) and became pregnant with her first child in her third year.
“There was a saying at St. John’s, ‘ifyou’re unable to enable, have
a baby,”’ she recalls,
Wilson enabled, but left when classwork became too much for
her. “I remember I had trouble keeping up with my fruit fly exper
iment-! had let some get loose,” she recalls.
She went on to have four children, and was one of the first
women on the East Coast trained in the computer language
COBOL. “I liked the logic in programming, and I was good at it,”
she says. Later, after moving to California for her husband’s
career, she earned a paralegal certificate and worked for law firms.
{The College.
Class of 1970, Steve Forman: “When people ask me if I went
to St. John’s for the books I say no, I actually came here for the
sports. Upon reflection I realized who I studied Euclid with, I
know who I studied the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle with. I also
remember who played for the Druids and how we hated the
Hustlers. Because of what I realize is important about that
other side of the Program that provided the balance in our fives
with the studying and the thinking and the conversations, I
think I’d like to [toast the late] Bryce Jacobsen [class of 1942,
former athletic director].”
Class of 1935, Roland Bailey: “. .. A toast to all of us who
have lived in accordance with the philosophy of Rabelais: ‘To
five: in general and tolerant fellowship with man and nature; in
grateful appreciation of the good things of fife; and in cheerful
expectation of all of fife’s inescapable vicissitudes.’ ”
(A poetic toastfrom Priscilla Husted Griscom, class ofiggs, can
befound on the inside back cover q/The College./
The women who entered St. John’s in r95r paved the way for
those who would come later; several women from later classes-all
the way up to 2004-joined the Kutler luncheon to hear the
stories and help the pioneers celebrate. Steered to St. John’s by a
teacher in her Cleveland High School who spotted her engrossed
in Moby-Dick, Josephine Jaster Poe (class of 1957) thought
St. John’s was still for men only when she first heard about it.
“Then I learned they had opened it up to women, but my father
said I couldn’t go,” she recalls. “I did anyway. And when I got
here, I had no sense that women were ever a problem. I was just
one of the boys.”
Her husband, Harvey Poe (class of 1952), later a tutor and dean
of St. John’s, recalls that the college embraced the idea that
“women could do anything the men could do.”
The college’s history also was a focal point of the weekend.
Tylden Streett (class of 1950) unveiled two plaster busts of New
Program founders Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan (see
page 5r). Class of T955 member Priscilla Bender-Shore brought
her series of oil paintings inspired by the Muses to share with the
college community and alumni during the weekend.
Charles Nelson (class of r945) set the tone for the weekend with
the Friday-night Homecoming lecture, “In the Beginning... The
St. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�2,8
{Homecoming}
''Thefreedom to choose the St. John spath
is essential to its success. ”
Charles Nelson (class of 1945)
Genesis of the St. John’s Program, 1937.” Nelson, who worked
closely with hoth men while he was a student, talked about Barr
and Buchanan separately-what type of childhoods and early
education they had-and what brought them together to launch
the New Program in 1937. He also talked about the decisions they
made, such as requiring faculty to teach across the curriculum,
and explained the rationale for such choices. He talked about
their struggles, such as a draining battle to ward off annexation by
the Naval Academy, and their triumphs.
Even as the college gained international attention for its
“radical” methods, Barr and Buchanan did not want the St. John’s
Program “universally copied,” Nelson said. “That would have left
the entering freshman without a significant choice, and the
ThemUSES
to
freedom to choose the St. John’s path is essential to its success,”
Nelson said. “The discipline and commitment required in order to
gain the rewards of the Program presupposes that the path is
freely chosen. In fact, I believe that most alumni would assert that
it must be not only freely chosen, but also pleasurable; otherwise,
it isn’t worth the pain.”
—Rosemary Harty
Homecoming
Seminars, book-signings, and parties are standard fare for
Homecoming in Annapolis. This year, thanks to artist Priscilla
Bender-Shore, class of 1955, there were The Muses, gracing the
Hodson Atrium (home to the Pendulum Pit) in Mellon Hall for
the full weekend. It was an appropriate visual tribute to the
women who in 1951 arrived in Annapolis to end the college’s
days as an all-male institution.
During a Saturday afternoon reception, Bender-Shore
provided insight into The Muses: Dancing at the Edge ofthe
World, which she graciously shared with the Annapolis campus
community. The series comprises several large paintings
depicting classically robed women engaged in graceful dances.
In her presentation, Bender-Shore said she was pleased that
this, her first visit back to St. John’s since graduation, gave her
a chance to share her work.
For Bender-Shore, the human figure, especially the female
form, is a muse. She studied at the Yale School of Art and
Cooper Union before attending St. John’s and earned her
M.F. A. from the University of California-Santa Barbara. She
currently lives and teaches in Santa Barbara.
“Priscilla won the Reader’s Digest award to study in Giverny,
France, and that was when she began to develop the ideas for
the Muse drawings,” notes Emily Kutler, class of 1955, also an
artist. “At a time when everyone was going modern, she stayed
with what she was doing: human figures. Everyone was glad to
hear her speak; she is so articulate and thoughtful.”
Bender-Shore showed through slides of her work how her
time as an artist-in-residence at Monet’s home in Giverny laid a
foundation for the series. 4-
For just a weekend, the Hodson Atrium became an art gallery.
On display was a series of paintings by Priscilla Bender-Shore
(class of Z955).
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
C
�{Homecoming}
Clockwise: At the afternoon picnic. Class
OF 1965 MEMBERS GeRALD ZoLLARS, MiKE
Woolsey, and Vivian Ronay trade stories;
Henry Shyrock (class of 193a) and Roland
Bailey (class of 1935) represented the
“old” program at the Saturday banquet;
Members of the class of 1955 and friends
AT the Kutler home; Two future Johnnies
enjoy Homecoming.
{The College- St. John
s College ■
Winter 2006 }
�30
New Books from
Santa Fe Faculty
{Bibliofile}
skv
,/in a bottle
Sky in a Bottle___________________
by Peter Pesic
MIT Press 2005
t starts with the simplest questionone every parent has heard, and few
have answered satisfactorily: why is
the sky blue? For Santa Fe tutor
Peter Pesic, the question is the first
step in a scientific journey that
starts with Plato and Aristotle and ends, if
it does in fact end, with Pesic. Sky in a
Bottle, the latest in Pesic’s remarkable list
of scientific and philosophic books, chroni
cles the search for an answer to a question
confronted by scientists and philosophers
for centuries. Plato, Leonardo, and Newton
all wrestled with the problem, as did the
understand the first two questions, the
ancient Chinese and Middle Eastern scien
third question becomes “Can we recreate
tists. The color of the sky is intimately
the color of the sky here on Earth? Can we,
connected with one’s view of the structure
in effect, put the sky in a bottle?” Pesic
of the heavens, the properties of fight, the
traces
the various attempts to answer the
functioning of the eye, the composition of
first two questions, taking the reader on a
elements, the nature of air, and man’s rela
tour through the central ideas of chem
tionship to the cosmos. As late as i86a. Sir
istry, optics, and atomic physics.
John Herschel claimed that the color and
In true seminar fashion, rather than
polarization of skylight was one of “the two
show how each thinker improved upon
great standing enigmas of meteorology.”
previous work, the book attempts to eval
The book begins by dissecting the
uate each of the proposed solutions on its
central question into three related ques
own merits, uncovering the scientific and
tions. The first question is “Why does the
cultural assumptions behind each thinker’s
sky have color?” The second is “If the sky
work. “One of the things that struck me
does have color, why is it blue rather than
was how long the question remained totally
some other color?” Once we think we
unresolved. Until almost 1900 people
really didn’t know why the sky was blue.
Many great physicists really barked up the
wrong trees trying to answer the question,”
said Pesic.
Pesic first encountered the question in
another scientist’s work. “I read a few years
ago about a physicist named Smoluchowski
who was working on the problem of trying
to duplicate the color of the sky in a bottle.
The more I learned of his work, the more I
began to wonder if it was possible. Could it
be done?”
Although the inspiration for the book
started with Smoluchowski, Pesic says the
question at the heart of the book has its
roots in his experience at the college.
Z
A SCIENCE EXPERIMENT LED SaNTA Fe TUTOR
Peter Pesic to ponder blue
skies.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter aoo6 }
“When I first came to St. John’s the first
class I taught was freshman lab. We were
studying the atomic theory and the question
“Do atoms exist?” Here I was a physicist
and I had never really asked myself this.
How could you prove atoms exist? I had a
Ph.D. in physics, but the question never
came alive for me until freshman lab. It
occurred to me that many of the things we
take for granted, like the color of the sky,
are, in fact, deep and interesting questions
worthy of reconsidering,” he says.
Sky in a Bottle explores Rayleigh’s scat
tering law and the connections between the
appearance of the sky and Avogodro’s
number. Pesic also discusses the depictions
of the sky in art, the secrets of matter and
light, and even what the sky’s brightness
might tell us about the size and density of
the universe.
For those who prefer to take a more active
role in tracing the conversation about the
sky, the book contains an appendix of 11
important experiments related to light and
color. “Some of the experiments in the book
are simplified versions of the experiments
we do in junior and senior lab. I included
them to see if it was possible to demonstrate
that light is a wave without using elaborate
equipment,” says Pesic.
—John Hartnett,
SF83
Excerpt:
Giotto was among the earhest artists to
paint the sky blue, as in his fresco of
the raising of Lazarus in the Arena
Chapel in Padua (1305-1306). Blue
pigments became much more available
through the use of the mineral azurite.
Yet even in the early part of the
fifteenth century, the secret of mixing
blue pigment was still closely guarded.
Ultramarine was the preferred hue,
made by grinding up lapis lazuli into a
powder, which then could be used as
pigment. It was ruinously expensive, so
rare that it was said to come “from
beyond the seas,” the literal meaning of
ultramarine. This extraordinary blue
long continued to be used for the most
special passages in paintings by Giotto
and later artists, usually reserved for
the robes of the Savior or the Mother of
God. Its expense also meant that only
the master artists would dare use it.
-Peter Pesic, Sky in a Bottle
�{Bibliofile}
Leaving Us to Wonder: An Essay on
THE Questions Science Can’t Ask
by Linda Wiener and Ramsey Eric Ramsey
SUNY Press, 2005
t might seem strange for a
St. John’s tutor to suggest in the
title of her new book that there are
some questions that can’t be asked.
In Leaving Us to Wonder, Santa Fe
tutor Linda Wiener and her
collaborator propose that he who poses a
question just might have already limited
the answer. Consequently, many of today’s
most important questions, when posed by
scientists, are doomed from the start to
limited or inadequate answers.
The book is an interesting collaboration
between a biologist and a philosopher.
Wiener is the biologist; Ramsey is a
philosopher and associate dean of the
Barrett Honors College at Arizona
University West. The two met at a
conference 10 years ago and struck up a
conversation on some of the issues that
had bothered Wiener in graduate school.
Their work explores the meaning of the
scientific worldview and how it plays out in
our everyday lives. Their book investigates
alternatives to what they call “scientism,”
the view that science is the proper and
exclusive realm for thinking about and
answering every question.
One might expect that the impetus
for such a book would come from the
biologist’s critique of the philosopher’s
methods and the philosopher’s objections
to those of the scientist. For Wiener, the
book really began when she was in
graduate school as a scientist and began
to question her own methods. She says,
“I wanted to be a biologist because I
wanted to be out with plants and animals
and living things. But in graduate school,
we treated animals and plants as if they
were purely mechanical and mathematical.
To the extent that science can study them
they are, but I couldn’t find anyone who
wanted to question that view. My
colleagues thought that science was the
way to understand everything. It seemed
to me to be too narrow.”
Although the book warns us about the
dangers of a scientific worldview in
general, Wiener uses a specific examplethe conclusions of evolutionary biologists-to help illustrate the case. Wiener
shows how researchers working in
evolutionary biology have stretched their
Z
conclusions to cover answers to questions
about dating and divorce, relationships,
childrearing, and the complex relations
between the sexes-questions that cannot
be answered from a scientific view alone.
But the blame for this worldview is not
limited to the scientists. At stake is the
commonly held idea that a question is not
properly answered until it has been
answered by scientists. Our modern
Leaving Us to Wonder
“My colleagues thought
that science was the
way to understand
everything. ”
Linda Weiner
popular worldview includes the erroneous
assumption that the only real and true
knowledge is the knowledge gained
using the scientific method. The book
challenges this worldview by asking
probing questions about modern inquiry.
Do the facts procured by technoscientific
systems render inconsequential our lived
experiences, the wisdom of ancient and
contemporary philosophic insight, and
the promise offered by time-honored
religious beliefs?
Drawing on authors from the Program,
including Socrates, Darwin, Nietzsche,
{The College.
5t. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
31
Kant, Heidegger, and others, Wiener and
Ramsey demonstrate how many of the
claims and conclusions of technoscience
can and should be challenged. They offer
ways of thinking about science in a larger
context that respect scientific practice,
while taking seriously alternative
philosophies whose aims are freedom, the
good life, or living well. For Wiener, many
of these ways of thinking were first
suggested by her experience at the college.
“Being a tutor here allowed me to see how
others have thought about the facts of
biology in different ways. In the Program
we see how Aristotle and Goethe and
Nietzsche are looking at some of the same
things as scientists, but with a different
approach. Those approaches allow you to
see new things that the modern scientific
paradigm doesn’t reveal,” she says.
As one might expect from a collabora
tion between a philosopher and a
biologist, the book is respectful of the
power of scientific thinking. Wiener is
not proposing that purely meditative
thinking, to borrow a term from
Heidegger, should supplant and replace
the calculative thinking of the scientific
method. Instead, she carefully presents
the idea that both kinds of thinking have a
role to play in getting at the truth-neither
has a monopoly on metaphysical reality or
objective truth. Calculative thinking
might propose that humans are
fundamentally collections of DNA and
should be viewed as such. Meditative
thinking might propose that humans are
fundamentally rational creatures who
exercise their will. Neither answer has a
monopoly on the truth, but each ignores
the conclusions of the other at its peril.
The book concentrates on the limits of
scientific thinking only because of its
prevalence in the modern world. Wiener
points out, “If you seek solutions in a
strictly scientific way you don’t tend to get
good solutions. First you have to figure out
what the problem really is. Once you hnd a
solution is needed, then you bring in more
technical knowledge at the end. You don’t
start with science. You end with it.”
—John Hartnett,
SF83
�3a
{Alumni Profile}
A Quest to Preserve Ancient Dance
Joseph Houseal, A84
BY Patricia Dempsey
raveling off-road in the
Himalayan Kingdom of
Bhutan means leaving
behind modern modes
of transportation-even
wheels. “Off-road
means traveling on yak, horse, or
foot” through windswept mountain
passes and isolated valleys, says
Joseph Houseal (A84). A gifted athlete
who once held the half-mile track
record in Michigan and was a profes
sional dancer, Houseal says that even
he gets weary traveling this rugged
terrain on his quest to find sacred
rituals and dance festivals. He travels
in Bhutan for up to seven months at a
time as part of a five-year project to
document Bhutan’s ancient dance
forms before they are lost to modern
culture.
When Houseal is in Bhutan-some
7,600 miles from his home in
Chicago-he is closer than ever to the
rural roots of his youth in St. Joseph,
Michigan, where his father is a blue
funded by the Core of Culture and the
berry farmer. The Bhutanese, a majority
Honolulu Academy of the Arts, will become
ofwhom practice Tantric Buddhism,
part of a traveling exhibition, “The Arts
recognize in Houseal a fellow farmer, a man
of Bhutan,” which will appear in several
on “a divine mission,” says Houseal.
U.S. cities, and in Europe and Asia before
“Everything in my life has come together
finding a permanent home in the New York
into this work of dancers preserving dance,” PubUc Library’s Performing Arts Dance
he says. “I am alive because I have this
Collection.
purpose.”
Landlocked in the eastern Himalayas,
Over the decades that he has devoted
between China and India, the Kingdom of
himself to dance, Houseal has attained the
Bhutan is an isolated sanctuary of nature
Eastern ideal of integrating body, mind, and and ancient culture, where dance is
spirit. He trained rigorously for his first
integrated into every aspect of life. The
career in professional ballet companies such
Bhutanese practice monastic dances, lay
as the Washington Ballet, made his choreo
religious dances, masked dances, and other
graphic debut on the Quad at St. John’s with sacred dance rituals. Dance is a form of
Aeschylus’ Choephori. He later moved to
meditation, communication, and informa
Kyoto to study the ancient Japanese Noh
tion. “Dance in Bhutan is not the same
Theater and there formed a dance company
thing as it is here in the states. We have one
that attracted critical acclaim. Today, as
word for dance. In Bhutan, they have over
executive director of the Chicago-based
20 words for dance,” says Houseal. Dance in
Core of Culture, Houseal leads a project to
Bhutan is also endangered, as centuries-old
videotape and preserve the dances of
forms of feudalism meet the 21st century.
Bhutan, In 2008 this ethnographic record.
“Today the Bhutanese are on the brink of
T
{The College
Sf. John's College ■
IVinter 2006 }
Joseph Houseal, posed for a Nihon
Buyo portrait. NihonBuyo is an
ANCIENT form of TRADITIONAL
Japanese dance.
creating a generation that will have
young people who cannot dance,”
says Houseal.
In Bhutan, Houseal travels ancient
mountain paths with his British
associate, Gerard Houghton, and
Bhutanese film director Karma
Tshering, who speaks 14 of the 22
Bhutanese languages. Last spring,
for instance, they had three months
to shoot 125 hours of film, but it took
up to five days each way trekking off
road to reach each of the six festivals
they recorded. A festival can last up
to five days, and dances last all day.
“It can take a lifetime for a deep spir
itual transformation, linked closely
to Tantric Buddhism, to take place,”
says Houseal.
Houseal’s journeys often lead him
to encounters with the mysterious and
mystical. In one such encounter he saw
exactly what is endangered in Bhutan. “We
met a monk named Lopon Sangay. He has
been a monk since he was eightyears old.
When we met him, he had been awake for
16 days, dancing five-and-a-half hours a day
in an elaborate three-week ritual. He
couldn’t understand why we thought that
was amazing. In his mind he was simply
acting out the Dharma, his practice as a
monk-this is a way of life in Bhutan,
dancing as a practice. And it is these
internal teachings that are endangered,”
says Houseal. “Movement can be preserved
and taped, but the internal teachings
training the body and the mind, the organs,
using visualization, projectory movement,
and energy awareness-cannot. When
Lopon dances, his body, mind, and spirit
are transformed.”
The audience or observer is also trans
formed. “It is a fusion of mind, body, and
spirit that leaves a karmic, compassionate
�{Alumni Profile}
imprint on the audience,” says Houseal,
“In Bhutan, you don’t applaud after a dance
is performed; you absorb the energy-so you
can’t help but be transformed and take
something away from it with you.”
The ambitious scope of Houseal’s work in
Bhutan is characteristic of someone with his
perseverance, passion-and, he admits, luck.
Growing up in rural Michigan, with eight
siblings, Houseal had little time or money
for dance. As karma would have it, a
92-year-old ballet teacher, classically trained
by Russian immigrants, lived within driving
distance. “She taught me the total art of
ballet: character, music, plot, costumes,”
says Houseal. After high school, he success
fully auditioned for the School of the Wash
ington Ballet and began as a scholarship
student. Then in the late 1970s, the touring
New York City Ballet needed performers to
dance as extras in Coppelia. with Barysh
nikov in the lead; Houseal was chosen from
among hundreds who auditioned. “I saw
how Baryshnikov lived and worked-in the
dressing room, with the press, dancing the
ballet-but I didn’t see myself living his life.”
Houseal, the valedictorian of his high
school class, wanted intellectual fulfillment,
so he left the world of dance for St. John’swhere he also learned to take himself seri
ously as a dancer. “I was trained as a
performer, but my tutors, especially
Chaninah Maschler, got me to explore the
profundity of being a dancer,” Houseal
recalls. “This was my first serious probe for
four years into the question: ‘What is the
nature of dance?’ ” Houseal also discovered
what has become a lifelong love of ancient
dance. He took 600 lines of ancient Greek
and choreographed a dance to be performed
on the Quad. “The Greek plays were meant
to be spectacles, meant to have a civic
purpose, a theatrical purpose. Where else
can you recreate such a spectacle but at
St. John’s?”
In Annapolis Houseal was also influenced
by Barry Talley, then musical director at the
Naval Academy, for whom he worked as a
choreographer. Houseal learned how to
reconstruct baroque operas, ballets,
colonial dances, and ballad operas. And it
was Houseal’s friend at St. John’s, Grady
Harris (A84), who introduced Houseal to
ancient theater forms and gave Houseal
translated Noh plays to read. Houseal was
also influenced by Francis Mason, Jr. (A43),
editor of The Ballet Review, who encour
aged him to “go to the source and find out
what dancers are teaching.”
Inspired by ancient dance of Greece and
drawn to an Eastern sensibility, Houseal
moved to Kyoto after graduation to study
Noh Theater under Master Matsui Akira.
Houseal later formed the Parnassus
Dancetheatre, which showcased dancers
from all over the world performing
Houseal’s avante garde choreography.
During the seven years he lived in Kyoto,
Houseal watched the city evolve into a
cultural Mecca. But by the early ’90s, the
cultural renaissance in Kyoto was devastated
by the city’s economic downturn and AIDS.
Houseal, a fortunate survivor of the disease,
pursued his life’s work with renewed passion
and studied for a graduate degree at the
Laban Center for Movement and Dance
in London.
He returned to Chicago, where he says he
33
found the “bald eagerness for money offputting,” While meditating one day in his
lakefront apartment, Houseal spotted a
monk walking by on the beach and invited
him in for tea. The monk told him to go to
Ladakh, a region in the Himalayas. Soon
Houseal found himself at a monastery in
Ladakh, where he was “transformed to
accept Fate’s call and recognized the need to
preserve ancient dance.”
As Houseal considers the transformations
in his life-from a farming youth to
professional dancer, from a college student
to choreographer, and now as a dance
preservationist, he observes that it can take
30 years of meditation and practice in
Bhutan to become a monk. “I look at myself
and see how it took only four years at
St. John’s to cultivate what has become a
deep part of my being,” he says. “At
St. John’s I developed my mind after I had
already trained my body. And look where it
took me-to the source, the Himalayaswhere I can reach my life’s purpose.”
For more information on the Core of
Culture’s dancepreservation project in
Bhutan, visit: www.coreofculture.org.
Top: Houseal in Kumasaka, a Japanese Noh
PERFORMANCE, AT KlI TeMPLE. HoUSEAL SAYS
HE WAS THE ONLY FOREIGNER IN 8OO YEARS TO
BE ALLOWED TO PERFORM NoH AT THE TEMPLE.
Left: Bhutanese
farmers, who are also lay
MONKS, REHEARSE A TRADITIONAL DANCE IN
THE VILLAGE OF UrA.
{The College. 5t. John’s College . Winter 2006 }
�34
{Alumni Notes}
1942
Ernest J. Heinmuller
writes, “Having moved from
St. Michaels, Md., I am now in
Easton, Md., recently
appointed to the Emergency
Medical Treatment
Committee.”
Adventures in the Orient
-OAN E. Cole (class of 1957) has been seeing the world
since her retirement from the New York Public Library
System and just returned from a trip to Japan and China.
“Seeing the evidence of their long pasts puts our past
in greater perspective. The U.S. is just a baby that can
and should learn from the ‘elders.’ Museum visits,
temples, and a performance of acrobats made it a most
memorable trip.”
J
Lee Mace is enjoying
retirement life at Leisure
World in Silver Spring, Md.
“Indulging myself with
travel-mostly cruises! ”
1948
“I became a great-grandfather,
doubly, with George Klimov
born October 5, aoo4, and
Shawn Trimble, born October
13,2004,” writes George R.
Trimhle, Jr.
1964
Attention, any Johnnies living
in England: Patricia Carney
would be glad to organize a
seminar for college alumni
living in the U.K. “I am in
Cambridge. Suggested
reading: Omerus by Derek
Walcott.”
1969
Andrew Garrison (A) writes:
1962
“Our son Jesse is in his third
year at Oberlin, studying
metaphysics and documentary
filmmaking.”
Michael Elias is set to direct
his adaptation of the Anthony
Burgess novel A Dead Man
in Deptford on the life of
Christopher Marlowe. Michael
is living in West Los Angeles
with his 13-year-old son, Fred,
1970
Les Margulies (A) has been
living in Kiev, Ukraine, for
almost a year. “I am Chief
Operating Officer of a group of
companies in the advertising
area (The Atlantic Groupwww.agl-media.com).
“Kiev is nothing like you
would think. It is not grey,
Soviet, and depressing. It looks
like a combination of Vienna,
Paris, and Prague. There are
not too many ex-patriots over
here (excluding government,
probably less than 1,000, so
that makes me a bit of a big fish
in a small pond). I love living in
Europe and can’t imagine why I
had not moved years before
when various opportunities
presented themselves. I do miss
certain foods, such as peanut
butter. Wheat Thins, and corn
muffins. But on the other hand,
excellent vodka is $3.5o/liter
and that more than makes up
for the other bits lacking.
“Living is much more expen
sive than you would think.
With the exception of vice
products (local beer, wine,
vodka, and cigarettes (50 cents
a pack), everything is the same
price or more as in the States.
Decent wine at a bar is
$io/glass.
“Intellectually the work is
very challenging and fun. Even
though most of my friends and
I am sure my fellow classmates
are retired to warm climates
somewhere, I am still going
strong. I may not remember the
details of Plato’s Republic, but I
sure remember my first mixer
at Chase Hall.”
{The College -5f. John’s College - Winter 2006 }
1972
Ilene Lee (A) celebrated her
birthday this year with an
early-morning ascent to the
top of Mount Tam in Marin
County, Calif. She writes:
“Wow-what a view!”
1973
Sheila Bobbs Armstrong
(SF, SFGI95, EC93), had an
intellectually stimulating
summer. “I just did the
Summer Classics: Nietzsche,
three comedies, and Sri
Aurobindo. I needed to kick
start my brain. My eldest son,
Ian, is a junior at St. John’s,
and my son Gamon is a senior
at Occidental College in L.A.
My third son, Quinn, is a high
school senior at Idyllwild Arts
Academy in L.A. Mike and I
are still in Santa Fe, Perth,
and traveling. I still teach
occasionally.”
Dr. Mary Batteen (A) was
made a full professor at the
Naval Postgraduate School in
July. She is the chair of the
Oceanography Department
there and regularly teaches
graduate courses in physical
oceanography and advises M.S.
and Ph.D. students. She was
recently interviewed for a
book. Careers in Focus, which
was published in 2004. She has
two children: Matthew, 13, and
Elizabeth, 8. Her husband,
Tim Stanton, is a field
oceanographer who has
traveled to the North Pole,
Antarctica, and Brazil, all
this year.
�{AlumniNotes}
Bursting with parental pride,
Jon T. Ferrier (A) writes,
“Our daughter, Valerie, is
halfway through law school at
St. John’s University in New
York, and Kayne and I are on
the L.S.D.-the Law School
Diet-for the next couple of
years-just in time for our 35th
class reunion! Pride abounds,
and our hearts soar, like the
eagle.”
1976
Richard Bradley Bonds (SF)
is a nursing student.
“Things have heen a little quiet
since St. John’s and law
school,” writes William W.
Campbell (A). “In 3004,1 got
the Honorary Young Farmer
Award from Pennsylvania
Young Farmers for ‘support of
adult farmer education in
Pennsylvania.’ Now that is
excitement!”
1979
Susan Herder (SF) loves
living in San Francisco and
working as a self-employed
neuro-muscular therapist: “I
have more free time now, as I
completed a pre-med program
at San Francisco State
University last year. (What a
trip, to have come t8o degrees
from shunning the sciences!)
I do a lot of sports-I’ll run my
first marathon (in the wine
country in France!) in
September, and regularly swim
in the bay. I think about my
classmates often and send you
all the best.”
1981
Marilynn Smith (SFGI)
reports that her move from
California to Texas went
smoothly last summer. “Living
near my daughter and her
family (including three
grandchildren) is priceless,”
she adds.
Edelman, born on May 36.
I can be contacted at
edelman3@stanf0rd.edu.”
Margaret Graham (SF) is still
living in Boulder, Go., with her
husband, three kids, one dog,
two budgies, and ii chickens.
She recently began taking
prerequisites for nursing
school, but notes there is a
three-year waiting list to get in.
1984
Peter Green (A) just started a
new job as deputy business
editor at The New York Post.
He often runs into Robert
George (A85), who writes
editorials for the Post. Catch
up with him on his work
e-mail: pgreen@nypost.com
News from Barry and Cynthia
Hellman (A): Thia Keppel
Hellman is one of the Hampton
University leaders organizing
the effort to build a state-ofthe-art proton radiation
therapy center in Hampton,
35
Va. The project will cost
approximately $180 million
and take several years to
complete. The certificate of
public need (COPN) was
awarded recently.
Fr. Robert Nicoletti (SF)
was apologetic about not
sending in his Alumni
Association dues this year, but
he has good reason, he notes:
“As a missionary with two
orphanages and a soup kitchen
(300 people a day), I need to
find funds.” He asked
St. John’s alumni to consider
supporting “these very human
itarian activities in the
Ukraine. Many thanks and
prayers.”
1987
John Sellers (A) is “married
to Becky Woods, teaching
grades 8-r3 math and science,
including chemistry and
physics. Challenging!”
continued onp.
1977
David Pex (SF) got married
August 14, 3005. “Complete
with instant family! Ages 4, 6,
and 8!”
1983
Jonathan ANroNio Edelman
Carla Schick (A) is still
writing. “I will he published in
a small independent journal
called Defect Cult. Other
poems have been published in
the Peralta Press and Word is
Bond.^"
(A) returned to graduate
school after 30 years in the film
industry. “I am working
towards a master’s degree at
Stanford University in the
Joint Program in Design
(mechanical engineering and
art). My wife, Annie, and I are
very happy parents of a new
baby boy, Liam Elijah Talbot
Honoring Excellence
“IM Sawatzki (AGI91) a teacher at Bethel High School in
Spanaway, Wash., has been named Washington History
Teacher of the Year by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of
The History Teacher of the Year Award honors one excep
American History and Preserve America. He received a
tional K-13 teacher of American history from each state and U.S.
$1,000 honorarium, and a core archive of history books
territory;
is was
based
on criteria
including
experience in
andselection
materials
donated
to his
school library.
teaching American history for at least three years; a deep career
commitment to teaching American history; evidence of
creativity and imagination in the classroom; and close attention
to documents, artifacts, historic sites, and the other primary
materials of history.
J
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�36
{Alumni Profile}
Logos in Action
David Veazey, Ayr
BY Rosemary Harty
man who uses the power
HIV hysteria must first be eradicated.”
of rational speech
The writing he does now is much
unjustly can do great
different from the approach he took when
harm, Aristotle writes in
he sat down to pen his senior essay on
Rhetoric. David Veazey
Plato’s Sophist. “St. John’s requires a
(A97) does just the
different sort of writing that I never use in
opposite; he employs carefullythe
chosen
outside world-that is, asking a lot of
words, solid evidence, and a well-crafted
questions and not necessarily coming to
argument to save lives by helping to fight
any conclusion compared to thesis
the spread of HIV/AIDS in Russia, where
argument-conclusion that the rest of the
the government has downplayed the risk
world is used to,” he explains.
while new cases rise at an alarming rate.
Veazey developed persuasive writing
Veazey lives in Moscow, where he works
skills on his own, noting that four years
as a grant proposal writer for AIDS
of the Socratic method prepared him well
Foundation East-West (AFEW), a Dutch
for the work he does today. “When I am
non-governmental humanitarian public
working on grant proposals I try to act as
health organization that seeks to reduce
sort of a Socratic midwife. I’m not an
the impact of HIV/AIDS in Eastern
expert on any particular AIDS issue,
Europe and Central Asia. The job taps two but I try to ask the experts questions that
of his best attributes: he’s passionate
will help them come up with a good
about making a difference in the world
project that will be interesting to a donor.
and skilled at drawing together informa
This approach has St. John’s written all
tion from many sources and assembling a
over it.”
persuasive argument.
Consider Veazey’s
editorial in the Kiev
Post, which sought to
meet the “rising
hysteria” about
HIV/AIDS in the
Ukraine tvith clear and
dispassionate logic.
He pointed out that
the stigma associated
with the disease
discourages people
from being tested,
tackled prevailing
myths about how HIV
is spread, and asked
ordinary citizens to
educate themselves
and get involved in the
fight against the
disease. “In order to
seriously address the
HIV/AIDS epidemic
in Ukraine,” he
concluded, “the
epidemic of fear and
A
Veazey’s route to Russia began at
Fordham University in New York, where
he was attending graduate school in
economics and working part time and
during summer breaks for Doctors
Without Borders. He worked as a
grant writer, then as a researcher for the
international humanitarian organization’s
access-to-medicines campaign. Ulti
mately, the work steered him away from
economics.
“I became very interested in how the
pharmaceutical industry worked and how
it affected drug development for tropical
diseases,” Veazey says. “I wanted to tie it
to my economics studies in industrial
organization somehow. I came up with
several good thesis topics but the problem
was finding the data to work with. All of
my classmates were working on very
esoteric topics with little relevance to
people’s lives. This was mainly because
the availability of data largely determines
the topic. So I
became more
convinced that
economics is
inherently unable
to answer any
meaningful ques
tions. . . I couldn’t
see myself doing it
as a career because
of that.”
When the
September ii
terrorist attacks
sent the city of
{The College. St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
continued onp. gr
Life in Russia is
ALWAYS INTER
ESTING, SAYS David
Veazey,
here with
HIS WIFE, Elena
Rudych, in Voloko
lamsk, A SMALL
TOWN TWO hours
from
Moscow.
�{Alumni Profile}
continued
New York into an economic downturn,
Veazey’s position at Doctors Without
Borders came to an end, and he couldn’t
find work anywhere-even part time.
Veazey decided that the time was right to
visit a friend in Moscow, where he could
explore the job market.
It was a risky move, primarily because
English is not widely spoken in the city,
and Veazey spoke no Russian. At first he
patched together freelance work writing
for magazines and newspapers for the
U.S. expatriate community. That led to a
job working for the Russian news agency
Prime-Tass. Veazey’s language skills
improved and he learned to edit “really,
really fast,” but the job paid very little.
Then he spotted an advertisement for a
position with Aids Foundation East-West,
“jumped on it, and got it.” His title is
senior adviser on proposal development;
in other words, bringing in money. He’s
been at it for three years now, and his
work is driven by urgency.
The AIDS epidemic is still new to the
former Soviet Union, he says. According
to UNAIDS, 860,000 people in Russia
have HIV/AIDS, the majority of whom
are drug users who contracted the virus
from contaminated needles. The outbreak
may be much higher than reported by the
government, says Veazey. Many more
people may not be aware they have HIV.
“The estimates vary widely because
there isn’t any good data available. Some
estimates are higher than a million. In the
highest HIV-prevalence areas like Irkutsk
and Samara, more than i percent of the
population is estimated to be HIV
positive. Once it goes beyond i percent,
the epidemic can easily become selfsustaining,” he says.
East-West sponsors projects supporting
local organizations that work with
injecting drug users, a method called
“harm reduction,” says Veazey. “The
ultimate goal is to get them not to use
drugs, but in the meantime, they can use
clean needles.”
Another foundation project seeks to
prevent the spread of HIV in prisons;
inmates have been trained as outreach
workers, medical professionals and
psychologists were trained on preand post-HIV test counseling, and
disciplinary and custodial staff received
training on reducing risk in the work
place.
Until about five years ago, the Russian
government was not aggressively involved
with the spread of AIDS, Veazey says.
“Politicians had been talking about
increasing border security because they
think the disease comes from abroad,”
Veazey says.
The government became more active
after Veazey’s organization and four
others attracted grant funding from the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis,
and Malaria, an international fund with
$7.a billion in pledges to fight three
deadly epidemics. The Russian govern
ment donated $20 million to the fund,
''When lam working
on grantproposals
I try to act as sort ofa
Socratic midwife. ”
David Veazey, A97
but did not apply for any grants itself.
“In 2003 AFEW and the four other
organizations applied for and won
$89 million in grants over five year for
HIV prevention,” says Veazey, who was
the lead writer. “This caused some
embarrassment among proud Russian
officials. There were a lot of behind-thescenes discussions about whether they
were going to allow us to go forward or
not. One faction of the government even
put together its own proposal at the last
minute to try to sabotage ours. But in the
end, we prevailed.”
The following year, the government
submitted its own successful proposal to
the Global Fund for a similar amount, but
focusing on HIV treatment, Veazey adds.
“Now things are starting to change.
President Putin announced in a speech
recently that he was ordering the
government to increase its budget for
AIDS by 20 times. Of course, we have to
see what they actually do with this money,
but the environment is sharply different
from a few years ago,” he says.
A favorite aspect of his job is writing
editorials and getting them published in
{The College
.Sf. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
37
newspapers such as the Kiev Post. Once,
he criticized the European Union for not
taking a big enough role in prevention;
another time he admonished the
U.S. government for advocating
abstinence-only programs. The U.S.
“essentially enforces abstinence because
they offer a lot of money and people
normally don’t refuse.”
Life in Moscow can be hectic. A native
of Chattanooga, Tenn., Veazey has never
grown used to living among so many
people: “At 12 million people, Moscow is
much bigger than New York. There are a
lot of high rises, and the city has a kind of
a grim exterior. There are a lot of reasons
to be grim, because there’s so much
poverty here.
Then there are the challenges of
everyday life in a city where some modern
conveniences have not quite caught on.
Says Veazey, “the most annoying thing for
a Westerner are small food shops called
producty. You walk in and there are about
four different counters for different kinds
of goods and you have to ask each person
for what you want, they weigh it and tell
you how much it costs, you go back to the
cashier and pay for it, you bring your
receipt back, and you can get whatever
you bought. Then, you have to do it over
again at the other counters.”
Life in Moscow improved dramatically
for Veazey in 2003, when he married
Elena Rudykh, who works as an assistant
network administrator. Elena’s family
lives in Novosibirsk, in Siberia, and
Veazey loves visiting the region. “Once
you get outside the city, the countryside is
beautiful, especially in winter, with birch
trees and snow,” he says.
His favorite thing about Russia is the
character of the people: good-natured in
spite of a hard life, resilient, friendly-and
devoted readers of great literature.
“Everyone here has read Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky. It’s pretty amazing,” he says.
Veazey and his wife are starting to think
about moving back to the U.S., where
Veazey would like to attend law school.
He’s still interested in advocacy. “I think
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not
going to save the world,” Veazey says. “It
just feels good doing this kind of work,
and I want to continue doing it.”
�{AlumniNotes}
38
Josephine Lucia DiggsGalligan on July 20, 2005, in
Washington, D.C. Big sister
Sophia Emmanuelle is enjoying
her new status immensely.”
Senegal Bound
(SFoi) has been busy:
“After leaving Santa Fe, I went back to school at
the University of Maryland, where I completed a
B.S. in Soil Science. I then worked for two years
Anne Schuchman (A) and Jim
as a carpenter’s apprentice/site manager for
Berrettini (AGI93) joyfully
Blakketter Craftsmen (whose newest employee is
Anne Neadham, Aoi.) I also took time off to volunteerannounce
with Red the birth of Augus
Feather Development Group, building strawbale homes
onJames, August 22, 2005.
tine
Indian Reservations (Hopi and Chippewa). I’m now on my way
Gus joins Samuel (6) and Stella
to Senegal as a Sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent with
(3). Jim is a manager at Time,
the Peace Corps. If anyone will be traveling through, they
Inc. Anne received her Ph.D. in
should see me (for the next two years).”
Italian Studies from New York
University in 2004 and is an
adjunct professor at NYU and a
research affiliate with the
University of Michigan. “We’re
living in Rutherford, N.J., have
started homeschooling, and
would love to get in touch with
Laurie Cooper (A) and Don
Graham Harman (A) reports
other Johnny homeschoolers
Kugelmass were waiting the
that his book Guerilla
(ams8050@nyu.edu or
arrival of their third child,
Metaphysics was published in
jpb@alum.mit.edu).”
expected this January. Laurie
August by Open Court. He is
continues to practice
still teaching at the American
psychotherapy in a community
University in Cairo, Egypt.
mental health clinic.
llison Anne Arnold
A
1988
1990
Clinton Pittner (SF) “got
1989
Beverly J. Angel (SFGI) is
now practicing intellectual
property law with the firm
D. McDaniel LLP.
divorced, but took a cross
country motorcycle trip from
Alabama to California (6,500
miles round trip), which was
nice. Found out there’s a K-ia
school that has a program
[similar to St. John’s], and even
has two Johnnies as teachers!”
Ken Turnbull (A) writes,
Lee Carpenter (A) is busy
completing a law degree at the
University of Maryland School
of Law; he expects to graduate
in May aoo6.
“My wife, Leslie, and I
continue to be astounded and
delighted by our i6-month-old
daughter, Fiona.”
1991
Teddi Ann Galligan and
David Alan Diggs (both AGI)
“announce with great joy the
birth of their second daughter.
1992
Elyette Block Kirby (SF)
writes, “I am living half an
hour south of Paris with my
husband and three children,
Benjamin, 4; Bronwyn, 3; and
Luca, I. I’m always looking to
meet other Johnnies living in
the area...or traveling
through.”
1993
Valerie Dufe-Strautmann
(SF) gave birth last August
to Northanna Mildred
Strautmann. She and her
husband, Jake Strautmann, live
in Watertown, Mass. You can
{The College -St John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
drop her a note by e-mail:
vsd_str@yahoo. com
1994
Bill Kowalski (SF) and his
wife, Alexandra Nedergaard,
are proud to announce the
birth of their second child,
Chloe Sophia Kowalski, on
December 6. “On the very
same day, the paperhack
edition of my fourth novel.
The Good-Neighbor (Harper
Collins), arrived on my
doorstep, reminding me that
December i was the official
release date. This edition
includes a P.S. section,
comprised of an essay, an inter
view, and a recommended
reading list, all by yours truly.
The essay is about St. John’s.
It’s written for people who
have never heard of us, and it
gives a very general overview of
the Program, so it won’t
contain anything particularly
new or enlightening for John
nies. But I hope it helps bring
SJC some more of the national
exposure it so richly deserves
(and international as well-the
hook will be translated into
German and Swedish).”
Colin and Emily Ray (both A)
have big news: “Our daughter,
Marina Claire, was horn on
December 2, 2004. We just
moved into our new house in
Tokyo. We’d enjoy having a
Johnnie visit us!”
�{Alumni Notes}
39
Fair Play
Shana Hack (Ag^) Loves Toys
wi Rosemary Harty
ince graduating from St.
John’s College, Shana
Hack (A95) has heen
selling toys for a living,
primarily in various stores
around Santa Fe. When
the time came to make some deci
sions about her future. Hack decided
that she was happy selling toys. “I just
realized I wanted my own toys,” she
says.
Hack was sorry to miss what would
have been her loth reunion last
September, but she had just opened
Moon Rabbit Toys, a block from the
Plaza on Guadalupe Street in Santa
Fe. It’s a family enterprise. Hack’s
husband, Scott Cox, a carpenter, built
shelves for the store. Her mother,
Karen, became her first employee.
From the beginning. Hack was out to
create an extraordinary toy store, one
that reflected her own values. Only
two toys in her store require batteries.
Most toys are made from natural
wood, and Hack scours catalogs and Web
sites to find toys produced under fair labor
conditions.
“I found some amazing companies in
Thailand that make toys of renewable wood
and that follow European Union labor stan
dards. I buy a lot of toys made in the U.S.,
and some wonderful board games made in
Germany. If I buy something from China,
it’s because it’s a really decent toy. Where
else are you going to get rubber chickens
and Ruble’s Cubes?”
Shana Hack, with
Rabbit Toys.
S
Don’t look for an Xbox or Game Boy in
Hack’s store. “I love simple toys,” she says.
“Take out a yo-yo and learn a trick. Who
doesn’t love a Slinky? And Frisbeesthey’re just brilliantly designed.”
Parents who remember how much fun it
was to play with a Jiberwheel-a hand-held
toy with a gyroscope-are buying them for
their kids, but playing with them instead.
Another popular toy is the goofy drinking
bird, which provides a physics lesson every
time he leans over to drink.
1995
M. Louise Heydt (SFGI)
writes that her first book.
Divine Rainbow, Nature as a
Spiritual Teacher, was
published in July 3005. It is for
sale at the St. John’s bookstore
in Santa Fe.
1996
“Hello Johnnies,” writes
Gwendolynne Barr (SFGI).
“What do you think-evolution
and/or intelligent design?
Experiment today by stirring
up the gene pool of the
Northern California Alumni
Association: www.teamrioja.org/
sjcaanc/index.html. We hold
{The College. St. John’s College ■ Winter H006 }
Moon
Hack’s stock of board games has
already attracted Johnnies who enjoy
strategic games. “There’s the ‘Settlers
of Catan,’ all about trading and
developing cities; ‘Carcasonne,’
which involves building a map; and
‘Hector and Achilles’-how could I
resist that?”
When she’s a little better estab
lished, Hack would like to start a
game night for Johnnies. Bringing
students into the store would give her
someone with whom she can discuss
her favorite books: Herodotus’ HistorfcA-which she keeps in her store to
peruse at leisure-and Moby-Dick.
With just a little advertising and a
good location. Moon Rabbit Toys has
already attracted a good base of
parents, tourists, and children of all
ages. The downside is that she’s been
known to work a month without a day offa small price to pay for the rewards of
running her own show and being able to
play with toys. “I’ve been dreaming about
this for four years, planning it for two,
and now I get to wake up every day and
say, ‘I own my own toy shop-how cool is
that?’ ” ♦
Tracy Christine Whitcomh
(A) writes, “One more year of
nursing coursework and I’ll be
an RN-BSN! I spent a semester
in Perth, Australia, and
enjoyed riding camels as well
as removing staple stitches.
I’m still in Vermont. Anyone
coming up to Burlington,
feel free to look me up at tracywhitcomb1973@hotmail.com.
Cheers!”
friends, at
seminars throughout the year,
as well as an annual symposium
at Stag’s Leap winery in Napa.
Good times, great (and other
wise) books.”
�{AlumniNotes}
40
1997
Jenn Coonce (A) works for
WcightWatchers.com and is
getting an M.A. in modern
psychoanalysis at the Boston
Graduate School for
Psychoanalysis in New York.
Casey McFaden (AGI) recently
accepted a position at Akin,
Gump, Strauss, Haver, and
Feld, LLP in Washington D.C.,
with a focus on the federal
regulation of electric utilities.
he writes. “I have asked David
Reber (AGI) to be a consultant
with our math curriculum, and
if possible, to teach part time.
The other six members of our
development team are not
Johnnies; however, they are
aware of and support our great
books approach. Most of them
have attended at least one
Touchstones workshop, and we
expect to be asking for
additional help from the
Touchstones program as well
as the great books program
once we have a contract and
start hiring additional
personnel. We are constantly
running into problems with
our Milwaukee Public Schools
administrators who don’t
understand why we don’t want
to operate the same as all the
other schools.”
1999
Mike and Arby Soejoto (both
A) are proud to announce the
birth of their son, John
Anthony, on July 10. Their
daughter, Lucy, turned 2 last
fall. The Soejotos live in
Los Angeles, where Mike is an
attorney, and Abby is a stay-athome mom. They’d love to
hear from any friends at
msoejoto@pircher.com or
asoejoto@sbcglobaLnet.
John Cowherd (A) writes,
“I took a month off and now
I’m back working at the same
place and waiting to get my
Virginia bar exam results in a
few weeks.”
2000
Paul E. Tanner (AGI) recently
William Conway (A) is living
accepted the Erickson
Research Fellowship in
Educational Policy at Michigan
State University.
in Philadelphia, working at
Saint Joseph’s University in
administration. “I’m studying
towards an MBA and am
available to talk to students
and alums about business
school and working in higher
ed administration:
wconway@sju.edu.”
Out of the Loop?
1998
Chris Jones (SF) writes that
Stephen Conn (SF) is happy to
all is “well in Tennessee. I’m
practicing pastoral counseling,
art, and Isha yoga. I miss
St. John’s and friends there, so
I hope to hear from some at
kierkegaardvark@yahoo.com.”
announce that one of his
comic-strip series, “The
Radioactive Rahbi,” has heen
picked up hy the Newport, R.L,
free weekly, the Mercury
(WWW. newportmercury. com).
He would also like to
shamelessly plug his Sgt.
Pepper/Great Books Authors
T-shirt, available in both
campus bookstores. He writes,
“Best to all the ’97/’98ers!”
Glen Scott Cooper (AGI) is
involved with an exciting new
endeavor. “We are opening a
new public charter school Aug.
I, aoo6-Downtown Institute of
Arts and Letters, a great books
high school that is part of the
small schools initiative of
Milwaukee Public Schools,”
Catch up on all the latest news. Join the St. John’s College
Alumni Online Community. Here, you can let friends know where
TO find you, discover what former classmates are up to, share
“For the next eight months, I
will be sailing as the director of
Resource Development on the
Voyage of Makulu,” writes
Todd Wilson (SFGI). “We will
sail from Australia to Italy,
teaching New York City public
school students world
geography along the way.
You can track the voyage at the
organization’s Web site:
www.reachtheworld.org.”
PHOTO galleries AND BLOGS, KEEP UP WITH ALUMNI EVENTS AND
COLLEGE NEWS, AND CONNECT WITH OTHER ALUMNI WORKING IN YOUR
FIELD. From the St. John’s home page (www.stjohnscollege.edu),
CLICK ON ‘‘For Alumni” and follow the directions from there.
continued on pg. 42
{The College- St. John's College ■ Winter 2006 }
�{Alumni Profile}
A Sweet Deal
PaulLaur (SFGIg^) Pursues a Values-CenteredEnterprise
BY Erica Naone (A05)
" hen he drove up
to Denver
recently to pour
cider samples at
a new chain
grocery story,
Paul Laur (SFGI95) took his 7-year-old
son Gavin along. As president of Santa
Fe Cider Company, Laur manages his
business with Gavin and Nathaniel (4)
in mind-involving them in the world
of work while enjoying the time he
spends with them.
“My sons go with me to pick the
apples or to drive the truck to the
press,” he says, “and that’s part of
what makes the job fun.”
The manager of the grocery store
had other ideas and told Laur it was
unprofessional to have his son
with him on the job. True to the
marketplace and with the community in
philosophical tendencies that brought him
which we live.”
to St. John’s, Laur went home and thought
Laur’s background, in fact, is
it over. What emerged was a clear view on
adventurous and far ranging. He began
the role of business in a person’s life,
his college career as a physics major at the
particularly his own.
University of California-Irvine, hoping to
“The manager was talking about
become a theoretical physicist. Sidetracked
corporate ethics-not professionalism at
into a sailor’s life, he found himself, in the
all,” Laur says. “I have a family-run
late 197OS, sailing a boat to Australia with
business. It makes total sense to me to bring three undergraduates from St. John’s in
my family along for the ride. It’s a shame
Annapolis: Steve Scott (A78), Preston Kelly
that corporations have to be so faceless.”
(A8a), and John Fleming (A78). Laur had
Laur has worked hard to bring the
already heard about the college and had
personal into the professional. When he
considered applying to St. John’s. Another
started his business in Santa Fe, he looked
old friend, Nick Kennedy (A81), had gone to
for a way to fit himself into his chosen
St. John’s and introduced Laur to the three
community. He wanted to attach his
men in his Annapolis crew. The experience
business to an existing story, and he found
on the boat, Laur says, “elevated St. John’s
that story in the orchards of New Mexico.
to the short list of things I wanted to do in
Planted by Spanish settlers 400 years ago
my life.”
with rootstock from Asturias in northwest
“I suppose the main point about sailing
Spain, the orchards risked losing their
with these guys,” Laur adds, “was that
water rights to fast-growing urban
during the 10 weeks or so that it took us
communities nearby. Laur wanted to help
to reach Australia, we had one or two
keep water in rural communities and began
conversations about life and our condition.
working to create a market for apples from
We didn’t spend much time in port-three
local orchards.
days in Panama and three days in Tahiti-so
The way he approached being an
most of the time we were logging miles at
entrepreneur came out of his liberal arts
sea and under sail, only running the engine
sensibilities. “My background has not been
an hour a day to charge the batteries.”
a business degree from Harvard,” he says.
After finishing his undergraduate degree
“It’s been about creating synergies with the
at the California Maritime Academy, Laur
W
{The College
- St. John’s College ■
Winter 2006 }
Paul Laur went
from sailing the seas
IN A MERCHANT MARINE CAREER TO
SELLING CIDER MADE FROM NeW MeXICO
APPLES.
found a career in the Merchant Marine
that allowed him to attend the graduate
program at St. John’s in Santa Fe
between trips to sea. He met his wife,
Ruth, just as he was finishing up at
St. John’s. It was then that Martin
Crowley, who had hired Laur years
before to deliver a sailboat, invited
Laur to manage a rum factory for him
in the Caribbean. This experience with
Pyrat Rum introduced Laur to the art
and science of taste.
“I became really good at picking up
subtle differences and could identify
which component was causing what,
yet I still had a lot of stuff that fed my
scientific geekism,” Laur says. “I love the
scientific process, but without the tasting
that goes along with it, it makes you a
plumber at best, rather than a composer.”
When Laur and his wife had their first
son, they returned to Santa Fe rather
than raise him in the Caribbean, “where it
would be a battle to get him to wear shoes.”
They founded the Santa Fe Cider Company
in 1999Being in Santa Fe allowed Laur to
participate in community seminars at
St. John’s that have fed his intellectual and
entrepreneurial interests. At a community
seminar on Flannery O’Connor, Laur met
Owen Lopez, executive director of the
McCune Foundation, which supports small
business and community development in
Santa Fe. Lopez became a great supporter
of Laur’s company. Laur also enjoyed a
seminar led by tutor Krishnan Venkatesh,
Graduate Institute director, on food, taste,
and the culture of connoisseurs.
Laur aims constantly for connection:
education to business, science to art,
living to livelihood. “Having a liberal arts
education,” he says, “means thatyou’re
liberated from being ultra-conservative and
having to have all the hghts green before
you go forward.”
�4a
{Alumni Notes}
2001
Matthew Lippart (SF) writes,
“After four years of crashing
up against the system, my
school is getting its own
building! Yay! In addition, I
would like to teach overseas
next year (China or India,
preferably) so any advice,
suggestions, or connections
would be appreciated. (Online
at mlippart@hotmaiLcom.)”
Talley Scroggs (A) and
Louis Kovacs (Aoa) are
living in Baltimore, Md. Lots
in the works, Talley writes:
Lou’s in medical school, Talley
is working three jobs and
applying to JD/MB A
programs, and they’re getting
“hitched” next June. They’d
be happy to hear from anyone
in town.
Southern Methodist University
in Dallas, Texas, this August.
She will be joining her
husband, George Finney
(SF99), who is starting his
second year in the same
program.
Erin Krasniewicz and Randy
Pennell (both A) are living in
Philadelphia and would love to
hear from other Johnnies in
the area. Randy works for the
Associated Press, and Erin
works for the Pew Charitable
Trusts. “If you are going to
visit Philadelphia and want to
know where to find the best
cheesesteaks, drop us a line
first! (Hint: It’s not Pat’s or
Gino’s.)”
nothing special.” He lives in
Philadelphia and is studying to
be a counseling psychologist.
Please contact him at
woollyrubric@yahoo.com if
you have any leads regarding
the whereabouts of a video
copy of Philoctetes: the
Musical, the class of 2002’s
notorious RealPlay. Also, he
writes, please contact him if
you can offer him a job in the
Philadelphia area.
2004
from chiropractic school this
April and will be spending the
summer in Brussels, Belgium,
learning French. She writes:
“I would love to hear from
anyone from St. John’s:
Drlauren@gmail.com.”
John C. Gorczynski (SF)
writes: “I have enjoyed
working for the mayor’s Office
of Public Safety and Homeland
Security in Houston, Texas. I
am very excited to be moving
to the San Francisco Bay area
this fall with Katie de Mahy
(SF03). See all you alumni out
there.”
Mark Ingham (SF) is living
the contemplative life: “I drive
a vacuum in the North
Canadian Oilfield while
listening to my own audio
recordings of Nietzsche.”
2003
In June, Ann Carruthers (SF)
finished her master’s degree in
philosophy at the University of
California, Irvine. She is now
living in Austin, Texas, with
Steven Orsinger (SF03) and
beginning a Ph.D. program in
political philosophy in the
Government department at
the University of Texas.
Mary Duffy (A) has signed on
for a lo-month stint with
AmeriCorps at the South
Whidbey Community
Engagement Center in
Washington State. “Whidbey
Island is in the Puget Sound,
about an hour north of Seattle,
including the ferry ride,”
writes Mary. “I’ll be living on
the island, sharing a house
with two other volunteers on a
stretch of Sunlight Beach,
which sits on Useless Bay.
I am still writing poetry and I
hope to finish a novel in verse
by next summer. I would love
to hear from Johnnies in the
Pacific Northwest, and can
be e-mailed at
hisgirlfriday@gmail.com.”
What’s Up?
The College wants to hear from
you. Call us, write us, e-mail us.
Let your classmates know what
you’re doing. The next issue
will be published in May; dead
line for the alumni notes
section is March 15.
Alumni notes posted to the
college’s online community will
also be included in The College.
Visit www.stjohnscollege.edu;
click on Alumni.
In Annapolis:
The College Magazine
St. John’s College, P.O. Box 3800
Annapolis, MD 31404;
rosemary.harty@sjca.edu
In Santa Fe:
Rebecca Anne Dwyer (SF)
Amanda Kennedy Finney (SF)
will begin her first year in the
evening law program at
2005
Lauren Shofer (A) graduates
2002
Evan Draper (A) is “doing
Applied Linguistics beginning
in fall 3006: “I am very
excited about this, having
spent the last two years
teaching English as a second
language in Taiwan and China
(which, according to the
Chinese, are the same),” she
writes. “I am glad that the
St. John’s education has
prepared me for graduate
study and that the good people
in Scotland realize it. The
program is 13 months long.
Edinburgh was my first choice
because of the vast linguistic
resources they have.”
has been accepted to study at
the University of Edinburgh’s
Master of Science program in
{The College -St John^s College ■ Winter 2006 }
The College Magazine
St. John’s College
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599;
alumni@sjcsf.edu
�{Tributes}
43
Remembering Ralph Swentzell
Santa Fe tutor Ralph Swentzell, a faculty
member from 1966 until his retirement in
2003, died of cancer last summer. At a
memorial service September 25, he was
remembered as a lifelong learner, as a man
with many diverse interests, and as a
devoted husband and father. In the words
of Dean David Levine, Mr. Swentzell
represented for many of his colleagues
“the paradigm of the St. John’s tutor:
An insatiable desire for learning joined to a
generous spirit, he mentored and inspired
generations of students and tutors alike.”
Similarly, Mr. Swentzell’s ability to
balance the demands of being a St. John’s
tutor, while raising a family and pursuing
many diverse interests, inspired colleagues
such as Tim Miller, who joined the faculty
shortly after Mr. Swentzell. “Because of
the hours of study needed by a tutor
teaching parts of the Program for the first
time, the strain on the tutor’s home life is
enormous. . . I think Ralph found a
balance between the two
obligations as well as any tutor
I have known. The collaboration
of Rina and Ralph in designing
and building their beautiful solar
home remains an inspiration for
me and I’m sure for many
others.”
The following are some
additional remembrances from
Mr. Swentzell’s colleagues and
friends:
"'He liked to play
with ideas, not because
he took them lightly,
but because hefound
them so beautiful and
fascinating.
Tom Simpson
met his wife and life companion, Rina.
After Mr. Bunker and Mr. Boyd were
recruited to St. John’s College,
Mr. Swentzell followed, and he joined
our faculty in 1966, retiring in 2003 after
37 years of active and exceptional teaching
(and learning).
Jorge AiGLA,Tutor
Ralph Swentzell was born in East
Patterson, N.J., on July 13,1938,
attended the local public high
school, and joined the U.S. Air
Force Band at the age of 17 in
1956, where he remained for four
years playing clarinet. In his free
time he read widely and was
much affected by the writings of
Freud. He went to study
psychology at Highlands
University in Las Vegas, N.M.,
where he came under the
tutelage of Robert Bunker and
Stuart Boyd, and where he also
Ralph Swentzell made significant
contributions to our Program: he was
instrumental in introducing original papers
to our music and junior mathematics
tutorials, and his helpful handwritten notes
for the junior and senior laboratories and
senior mathematics are legendary in their
clarity and true liberal approach. Ralph was
an early incentive in the planning and
formulation of the Eastern Classics
program, and was responsible for the firstever computer-based Chinese lexicon.
Several of us had the privilege to be in his
“Computers and the Mind” Schmidt
Study Group the first year this fellowship
was awarded.
If there ever was a man who learned from
learning, it was Ralph Swentzell. For him,
teaching was an excuse for touching
students and colleagues. To co-lead a
seminar with him or to be in a tutors’
meeting with him, were transforming
experiences. Every conversation (about
anything) was a conversion. One
could feel oneself learning from
him and being changed by his
authentic human presence.
Ralph illuminated the texts,
never disposing of them; he opened
the books while he allowed himself
to be intimately and personally
opened by them. One could often
hear him in the hallway or Quad. ..
saying to his interlocutor: “Yeah,
yeah that sounds right, and from
what you are saying it is as if.. .”
and then he went on clarifying and
amplifying whatever was centrally
at stake in the conversation.
His personal interests were deep
and broad: neural networks,
consciousness, quantum
mechanics, computer modeling,
relativity, emergence, Chu Hsi
and Neo-Confucianism, Bodhid
harma, thermodynamics,
biochemistry. Ralph was an
intrepid wind surfer, a house
A MAN WITH MANY INTERESTS, TUTOR
Ralph Swentzell left his mark on
St. John’s College.
{The College - St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�44
builder (he and his family
built their lovely home in
Santa Fe and their weekend
home in Madrid), a jogger,
and a lover of sweets and
used bookstores, and since
his retirement, he was
engaged in learning how to
play the guitar.
As an individual he was
kind, gentle, acute, compas
sionate, without a tinge of
pride in his polymathy or
intelligence. Through him
many of us were granted a
glimpse into the mystery of
friendship.
Ralph was a devoted
husband for 45 years and a
loving father of three
wonderful daughters,
grandfather of twelve, and
great-grandfather of three
children. He made time to be
with his family, and to make
a family.
Tom Simpson
Tutor Emeritus
In thinking about Ralph Swentzell, the
word that comes first to my mind is
“hearty.” I think of his hearty laugh, his
zest for ideas, his love for people and for
the world-his total dedication to the
pursuit of truth, and an almost diffident
modesty about any claim to having arrived
at it! For many years, Ralph and I have
been good companions in adventures of all
sorts, including, most of all, adventures of
the mind. Whatever crazy idea I came up
with, I could always count on him to give a
hearing to, and find some possibilities in it,
but when I came up with a seemingly safe
and innocuous idea, he would say gently
that he’d been wondering about that-and I
would find that the idea I had thought so
simple and secure in fact had a very
different side, and opened up in ways I had
never imagined.
He liked to play with ideas, not because
he took them lightly, but because he found
them so beautiful and fascinating. The
more seriously he took them, the more he
delighted in that play. I think it’s fair to say
that however far afield his personal inter
ests took him, the college was always in
some way close to the center of his life-not
{Tributes}
in its institutional aspect, certainly, but
because those books and those questions
were always so vivid and vital to him. They
were part of his lifeblood, and that is why it
was always so exciting to share them with
him. He suffered immensely-more than
most of us, I suspect-when institutional
constraints seemed to cramp and distort
that open chase for truth.
He did indeed voyage far from the known
shores of our Western learning! Armed with
that computer program he had devised to
open Chinese works to our tutorial way of
starting out by reading fascinating texts -he
took off for the far shores of Eastern thought.
He went to the core of the question of what
language is, and how it serves thought. He
knows, as Scott Buchanan had before him,
that it is only by getting far outside the
confines of our presuppositions, that we
might be able to see ourselves in our true
proportions-not as Western, or Eastern, but
as fully human. With the Eastern Studies, he
threw a challenge to the college, one which I
always felt we had really failed to hear. It is
not too late for that!
When Ralph got hold of a good idea, he
would not let go of it. Many years ago,
when he and I were thinking about possible
spaces and other worlds, we began
wondering about the strange structure of
the Lobachevskian geometry. What would
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
it mean, we wondered, to be
living in a world like that?
We tended to conclude, as
everyone does, I guess, that
depending on the scale,
things might not seem so
different. The closer you got,
the less you would know
where you were! There
seemed to be a moral in that.
We had that conversation
long ago. But just a few
weeks ago I had a chance to
visit with Ralph one more
time, catching him, as it
happened, at a moment when
he was briefly filled again
with his old exuberance. He
went up the little stairs to his
computer room to make me a
copy of the latest version of
the Chinese dictionary-and
then called down, “Hey!
Come on up! I want to show
you something! ” Thinking
back to that old conversation, he had
worked up a computer program which was
ready to take you anywhere you wanted to
go in the Lobachevskian world. You could
go to any farthest corner, and there look
around to see what the cosmos looked like.
Sure enough-our old speculation was
verified: the deeper you got into that
cosmos, the more it looked like home!
Ralph had achieved a special stance, at
some far corner of the cosmos best known to
him-from which he could see all his worlds
at once-the Western one, with the music,
the mathematics, the quantum perplexities
he loved so much-the Pueblo one, in its deep
peace with the cosmos-and the Chinese one,
with its special power to see truth as at once
aesthetic and whole. He hasn’t solved every
thing, or maybe anything, but he had seen so
much! He was ready to take it all on, with
that hearty laugh and an undying sense of
wonder and amazement.
It was very typical of Ralph that at the
end of our last few minutes together, he
said he wanted to lend me a book. It was
the philosophy of Hua-Yen, and he thought
it might be just what I was looking for. I
don’t yet know just what he meant, but I
still have the book. I have my assignment,
and I’ll see what I can do with it! ♦
(Read by Hans von Briesen)
�{Tributes}
45
A Homecoming Tribute to Bill O’Grady
William O 'Grady was a tutor at St. John's
Collegefrom nj7o until his death in tgS6.
In a relatively short time at the college,
Mr. O 'Grady made a lasting impression on
many students and tutors, and his absence
is stillfelt.
Mr. O’Grady now has a permanent
memorial: aframed collage ofpictures
taken on his wedding day, unveiled during
Homecoming in the Coffee Shop. Several
former tutors, friends, and colleagues of
Mr. O ’Grady gathered to share their memo
ries. Santa Fe tutor Cary Stickney, A’25,
offered this tribute:
When we call to mind the dead that we love
we sometimes make them better than they
were. Especially if they diedyonng or
untimely we try to balance our sense of
what was taken from them with the most
generous account of what they took: unahle
to see why they should he gone while we
remain, we conclude that it should he vice
versa. So a certain kind of eulogizing is
distantly akin to what Priam does when he
calls his remaining sons worthless after the
death of Hector, or even heaping dirt and
ashes on his own head. There may also he a
kind of suspicious ease in praising the
dead: let their virtues he what they will, we
feel we cannot he properly compared to
them until our lives, too, are over.
I mention these dangers not supposing
that hy naming them I can be sure of
entirely escaping them, hut as an
invocation of the spirit of truth. It should
he possible to praise someone, even
extravagantly, while speaking truly. I
hope you will take what I say with less
than a grain of salt.
I knew Bill O’Grady first as my
sophomore math tutor, then through his
Friday night lectures, then as a colleague
when I became a tutor in Santa Fe and he
spent several years on that campus.
I do not remember much of that math
tutorial 33 years later; I was not working
at it with real devotion or deep interest.
I may not have been atypical: what I
remember is Bill reading aloud to us
sometimes-an essay or maybe a story
in what I now recognize were attempts to
kindle a fire in our unseasoned, soggy
souls. He did not try to blame or
intimidate the class into more serious
learning, nor did he lecture on what he
himself had learned or was learning. He
kept presenting us with opportunities.
Of the things he read, I remember only
one. It was about a Mexican bullfighter
whose nickname was “El Loco,” perhaps
because on his bad days an unprejudiced
observer might decide that he had just as
good of a reason to be in the bullring as a
lunatic escaped from an asylum. On those
days it seemed a miracle he was not killed.
But on his good days every move he made
seemed a miracle of grace and skill. You
left the stadium proud of the whole human
race. El Loco had an enormous following,
whether in spite of or because of one’s
never knowing if a particular performance
would be his best or his last. What, asked
the writer, would it be like for us to judge
one another and ourselves not on the basis
of our everyday fumblings but according to
what we are at our very best? That question
continues to resonate for me, occasioned
not only by my students or colleagues but
also by my own mysterious inertia and
capacity to disappoint myself.
But it was as an interpreter of texts in
Friday night lectures and question periods
that Bill O’Grady seemed to me to fully
manifest his own gifts. He was the most
penetrating reader I have ever known.
He read not only with his mind but also
with his heart. Under the light of his
attention books revealed themselves to be
more beautifully put together than I could
have imagined possible, and to be more
directly addressing my own heart and soul
than I could have dared to hope, and these
were not separate. . . He never talked down
to students. I think this was because he had
read and thought, to paraphrase Pascal, not
like a professional scholar, but like a
human being.
He once proposed as an example of what
Socrates meant by finding his corroborating
witness within the very one he sought to
persuade the story of Nathan the prophet
rebuking King David for his murder of
Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. Nathan tells
David of a rich man who has taken his poor
neighbor’s one ewe lamb, his beloved pet,
and slaughtered it to feast a visitor, though
he had many flocks of his own. David
exclaims, “That man deserves to die!” and
Nathan replies, “Thou art the man.” It is
the vividness of David’s realization that the
story is about him that I find in all of Bill’s
encounters with texts. He is not present as a
specialist, an impartial expert who has built
an airtight case that will be most interesting
only to fellow experts, but as a fellow doer
and sufferer with the author, with the
characters, whose own fate is tied to the
questions of issue.
We are all prone to imagine that it might
after all be best and most admirable to
be some kind of expert about some
thing. Even El Loco on his good days
looked as if he knew everything about
bullfighting. And whether best or not,
all kinds of expertise are necessary, if
life is to be more than just survival. But
whether all things in the world are as
they are merely by necessity or because
it is somehow for the best is not a
question to be decided by expertise.
And those for whom that question can
be a matter of their own happiness or
misery, of life or death, could do worse
than to take Bill O’Grady as an
exemplar, to read what he wrote and
remember what he said and did, and to
find his spirit alive in all that is best
about St. John’s College.
Tutor William O’Grady
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
�{Obituaries}
Thomas McDonald, Class of 1948
Former Tutor
Thomas McDonald, a tutor for three
decades on both the Annapolis and Santa
Fe campuses, died after a long illness from
complications of Parkinson’s Disease on
December 27, 2005, in Baltimore, Md.
Mr. McDonald was born in Atwood,
Kansas, and lived in Kentucky, Missouri,
Iowa and Illinois before arriving in
Alexandria, Virginia, in 1941 at the age of
13. He enrolled in St. John’s at the age of
16. The following summer at age 17, when
informed that at 6'5" he was too tall to be a
Marine, he requested and received a Senate
Naval Affairs Committee waiver to enlist in
July 1945Discharged in late 1946, Mr. McDonald
attended the University of Virginia briefly
and then entered the New School for Social
Research in New York. There he studied
philosophy under Karl Lowith and Hans
Jonas. In 1958, after serving as a lecturer at
the New School, he taught for three years
in the University of Chicago’s Basic
Program of Liberal Education. Following a
year in Europe, he joined the St. John’s
faculty in 1963. He taught for several years
in the 1970s and 1980s at the college’s
campus in Santa Fe, NM. He also served as
a visiting professor at East Texas State
University and as a visiting fellow at the
Kennedy Center for Bioethics at
Georgetown University. An authority on
Kant, he spent his 1976-1977 sabbatical
year in Germany. He retired in 1991,
but continued to teach part-time.
Santa Fe tutor Jim Carey (class of 1967)
had Mr. McDonald for his freshman
math tutorial in 1963, and felt very
fortunate to have known him as a tutor
and a colleague. “He was in, my opinion,
the finest tutor who ever taught at
St. John’s,” Mr. Carey said.
Howell Cobb, Class of 1944
FederalJudge
Howell Cobb, class of 1944, who had a
distinguished career as a jurist, died
Sept. 16. 2005. Judge Cobb was born in
1922 to lawyer and state circuit Judge
Howell Cobb and his wife, Dorothy Hart
Cobb, in Atlanta, GA. He was reared in
Georgia and Washington, D.C. From 1940
to 1943, he attended St. John’s, but World
War H interrupted his studies. He served
as a second lieutenant in the Marine
Corps, where he saw action as a
John Mack, class of 1945
fighter/bomber pilot in
the South Pacific.
After the war. Judge
Cobb earned an LL.B,
from the University of
Virginia 1948. He
attended the University
of Texas Law School to
prepare for the Texas Bar
Examination and in 1954
was hired by the firm of
Orgain, Bell, & Tucker in
Beaumont. He became a
partner in 1956. In 1985,
President Ronald Reagan
appointed Cobb a U.S.
District Judge. He served
for 20 years, assuming
senior status as a sitting
judge in March 2001.
Judge Cobb is survived
by his wife, Amelie; six
children; and 21 grandchildren.
John Mack, Class of 1945
Former BVG Member
John Duncan Mack, class of 1945, of
Concord and Chatham, Mass., died
Sept. 27, 2005.
Mr. Mack was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in
1924 to Josephine and John George Mack.
He served two tours as a sergeant in the
U.S. Army Infantry in World War II in the
South Pacific and was awarded a Silver Star
and a Purple Heart.
Mr. Mack’s studies at Annapolis were
interrupted by the war. He began at
St. John’s as part of the class of 1945, but
received his diploma in 1948. He became a
very active supporter of the college, serving
as a member of the Board of Visitors and
Governors and as national fund-raising
chairman. He graduated from Harvard
Business School in 1950.
Mr. Mack began a long career as a
marketing executive at Welch’s Grape Juice,
followed by Procter & Gamble, Clairol,
Bristol-Myers, and Gillette. From 1976-1992
he was president of Carter-Products, CarterWallace, in New York City.
During his career, he was president of the
Wave Hill Environmental Center in
Riverdale, N.Y., and was elected to the
Township Committee of East Amwell, N.J.,
{The College
St John’s College ■
IVinter 2006 }
where he served as Deputy Mayor. While
living in Concord, he was a trustee of the
Thoreau Society, trustee of the Thoreau
Farm Trust, and a member of the Historic
District Commission.
Mr. Mack is survived by his wife, Lorna
Carey Mack; by his sisters, Anne Dean and
Mary Hurst; by his four daughters, Pamela
Mack, Sheila Mack, Carey Weber, and Lorna
Sheridan; and by seven grandchildren.
Theodore X. Barber, class of 1947
Psychologist
Theodore X. Barber, 78, whose pioneering
research and writings explored hypnosis
and the nature of consciousness, died of a
ruptured aorta Sept. 10, 2005, in Boston.
Hailed as one of the most prolific and
revolutionary authors on hypnotism.
Dr. Barber, a psychologist, developed the
Barber Suggestibility Scale to examine
scientifically the experience of individuals
under hypnosis. He conducted his work
for more than 35 years at the Medfield
Foundation and Cushing State Hospital in
Massachusetts.
Doing post-graduate work at Harvard,
Dr. Barber read a paper in a British
medical journal describing how hypnosis
had improved an “incurable” skin
condition of a teenage boy. The case, he
later wrote, “indicated that the royal road
�{Obituaries}
to solving the mind-body problem” was
hypnosis.
Dr. Barber served as president of the
Massachusetts Psychological Association
and of the Hypnosis Division of the
American Psychological Association.
He received numerous awards, including
the Presidential Award for Lifetime
Contributions to the Field of Hypnosis, by
the Society for Clinical and Experimental
Hypnosis (aooa).
Two of his most widely read books are
still in print; Hypnosis: A Scientific
Approach (1969), and Advances in Altered
States of Consciousness and Human
Potentialities (1976).
In his work The Human Nature ofBirds:
A Scientific Discovery with Startling
Implications (1993), he showed how birds
have intelligence equal and sometimes
superior to that of humans.
Born in 1927 to Greek immigrant parents
in Martins Ferry, Ohio, Barber graduated
from high school at age 15 then enrolled at
St. John’s. He earned his doctorate in
psychology at American University in
Washington, D.C., and then moved to
Boston to do post-graduate work at Harvard.
Henry Clay Smith, Class of 1934
Psychology Professor
Henry Clay Smith, a member of the class of
r934, died in West Tisbury, Mass., at the age
of 92. Dr. Smith was born in T913 in
Catonsville, Md., was raised by maiden aunts
after the death of his mother, and attended
St. John’s on a scholarship. After graduation,
he went on to earn a doctorate of psychology
at Johns Hopkins University.
For 38 years, he was a professor of
psychology at Michigan State University.
He taught, conducted research, and
puhhshed books on industrial psychology,
personality development, and sensitivity to
people. His early work on the effects of
music on productivity of assembly line
workers helped make music part of the
background of daily work hfe. Among his
publications were three major textbooks and
numerous articles.
Dr. Smith strove to achieve a rich, balanced
life in the manner of his idol, Thomas
Jefferson. He designed and built a house
based around a three-story tower, which was
his home for the past 30 years. His self
improvement projects ranged from yoga to
developing a legacy blueberry patch and
reading rpth-century novels. He was an avid
player of tennis, golf, and croquet. The last
of his writing projects, a biography of
Thomas Jefferson, was in progress as his
illness progressed.
Dr. Smith is survived by his wife, Nancy,
three children, eight grandchildren, and six
great-grandchildren.
Tania Forte, Anthropologist
by Michael N. Fried (A8a)
Tania Forte (A85) died from a cerebral
aneurysm on November 17, 2005. She was
46. At the time of her death she was a visiting
scholar at Hamline University in St. Paul,
Minn., on leave from the anthropology
department at Ben Gurion University of the
The goodness ofher
friendship was in its
being both pleasing
and elevating
Michael N. Fried
(A82), on Tania Forte
Negev in Israel. She was highly regarded by
her professional colleagues and she was
loved by all those who had the good fortune
of knowing her.
After leaving St. John’s, Tania studied
anthropology at the University of Chicago
and completed a Ph.D. there in aooo. Her
doctoral work concerned transactions, land,
and histories in a small Arab village in the
Galilee. Her research during the last few
years centered on the production and use of
images of the Palestinian-Israeli conllict-the
conflict through the lens of the television
camera, one might say. She was also working
on a book on the everyday practices of three
generations of Palestinian women in the
Galilee. In all this work, she saw people
producing stories and images, and she was
fascinated with how these verbal and visual
accounts served both to represent the world
and to define the identities of those
producing them, in short, how people create
themselves by the histories they teU.
Tania’s own history was itself an extraordi
nary tale. Her grandparents came from Gaza,
Turkey, Iraq, and Italy; her parents. Clement
and Daisy, were born in Egypt, were exiled
by Nasser after the 1956 Suez war, and even
47
tually immigrated to France. Tania grew up
in France, but she was born in London and
kept a British passport-her only passportall of her life. Tania would probably have
allowed her British passport to quietly
expire, were it not necessary to have some
passport: such things were of little impor
tance to her. Thus she wrote in a little piece
called “Weedlings”: “Since I’m not very
good at nationalities I have not changed it
[her passport] through years of living in
four other countries, where the last thing
anyone would suspect about me is that I
am a subject of Her Majesty.” She was one of
those people who seem to belong nowhere
and everywhere.
Tania entered St. John’s in Annapolis as a
Febbie in 1982.1 graduated that year and
hardly knew Tania in the few months we were
both at the college. But when she came to
Ben Gurion University, we spoke about the
college constantly. Like most of us, she felt a
great sense of loyalty and debt towards
St. John’s and believed it to be a central
locus for her intellectual formation. Indeed,
I can remember a conversation shortly
before she left for Minnesota in which she
said that it was becoming increasingly clear
to her how genuinely different we are from
our respective colleagues because of those
four years in Annapolis.
I hope I will be forgiven for speaking just
now in the first person, but Tania was a very
good friend. And here I must say that Tania’s
intellectual gifts were equaled by her
capacity for friendship. As a friend she was
warm and generous, she knew how to laughshe had a wonderful laugh-but she also knew
how to demand. She would not allow her
friends to fall into easy self-pity, moral or
intellectual laziness. The goodness of her
friendship was in its being both pleasing
and elevating.
Also Noted:
Winston Gilbert Gott, class of 1931,
May 3005
W. Morris Shannon, Class of 1937,
July 39,3005
Thomas Spence Smith, class of 1938,
February 3005
{The College -St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�48
{Alumni Voices}
GOING HOME
Life in Katrinas Wake
BY Sara Roahen, SF94
n the last Tuesday in
October, I flew home to
New Orleans for the
second time since
Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita lashed and inundated
the city. On the approach, the plane sailed
above Lake Pontchartrain, whose calm
waters appeared impossibly untouched
by the storms, and it cut across the
Sara Roahen, SF94
Mississippi River’s bends, around which
barges pushed and containers waited in
tidy rows to he emptied or filled, just like
they always had. The pilot took a wide
on a triumvirate of New Orleans institu
right turn and noted over the intercom,
tions: Angelo Brocato’s, an Italian ice
“Ladies and gentlemen: there’s downtovwi
cream parlor and bakery founded in 1905;
New Orleans to your left.” It didn’t occur
Venezia, an Italian restaurant where
to me until later that he would have said
almost nothing comes without red sauce;
the same thing to a cabin of tourists; at the
and Pho Tau Bay, a local Vietnamese chain
time it made sense for him to point out a
that marked a refugee community’s
hopeful, unflooded area to those of us
breakthrough into New Orleans’ popular
whose stomachs wrenched at the thought
food culture when it opened along the
of returning to our devastated city. But as
high-profile strip last year. The flood’s
my seat was on the right side of the plane,
unforgiving waters had marked the three
I saw what he didn’t mention; thousands of businesses with brown, waist-high stripes.
downed cypress trees turning fragile
Brocato’s and Venezia’s vintage neon signs
swampland into a game of pick-up sticks;
had smashed to the ground; we found Pho
aqua-blue FEMA tarps reflecting like
Tau Bay’s two blocks away. It was a full
swimming pools in the sun from nearly
month after Katrina, but no one had begun
every rooftop of suburban Kenner; dump
cleaning yet. I have never heard a sound so
upon dump of maggot-clogged refrigerators, startling as the silence that crashed down
some hurled willy-nilly into heaps, others in
when we shut off the car motor. No kids,
formation. This didn’t look like our city.
no streetcar, no electrical buzz, no birds.
We were a cabin of tourists after all.
We couldn’t even hear the flies that dark
My husband, Mathieu de Schutter
ened the ice cream parlor’s windows from
{SF94), and I took our first post-Katrina
the inside.
trip home exactly a month earlier, before
When people ask us about New Orleans,
we technically were allowed back into the
which happens less and less, the first
city. Matt is a resident at Children’s
question is always about our house. We’ve
Hospital, and a flash of his ID was
lived in New Orleans since 1999, when
convincing enough for the two peachMatt entered medical school at Tulane
fuzzed National Guardsmen securing
University, and we committed to the city
Earhart Boulevard. Before heading toward
last April by purchasing a house two blocks
our house, which we had heard was dry and from where we had rented for six years. We
standing, we drove to one of my favorite
wanted to stay in the neighborhood,
blocks, in an area called Mid-City, to check
mostly because it’s at the start of the Mardi
O
. though our house
is intact, our lives,
and those ofourfellow
New Orleanians,
are not.
{The College- St. John’s College • SVinter 2006 }
Gras parade route. The area turns into one
big, feel-good, family-oriented block party
for the two weeks preceding Mardi Gras;
even when we don’t feel like watching the
parades, we enjoy hearing the marching
bands warm up, feeling the bass drums
boom, watching families tromp along with
empty bags they hope to fill with beads,
doubloons, and penny toys. Our new
house, by the way, endured the storms like
a champ. We’ve had to replace some
roofing tiles, and a whole wall of siding,
and the ceiling in the living room, which
sagged precariously when the house
settled weeks afterward. A pecan tree fell
in the backyard, crushing our fence (but
thankfully not Matt’s skateboarding ramp),
and the house’s foundation cracked in
several places. All that can be fixed,
though, especially given that we have a
multi-talented neighbor whose six-pack
lunches we abide when no professional
bosses will.
Hearing the positive news about our
house, most people stop asking questions
and move onto the news of the day-that
sickening earthquake in Pakistan, White
House indictments, winter-which means
we rarely get to mention anymore that,
though our house is intact, our lives, and
those of our fellow New Orleanians, are
not. To begin with, we are moving to
Philadelphia. Matt got a second residency
position in anesthesia at the University of
Pennsylvania once it looked certain that
the program we had been banking on, at
Tulane, had lost its appeal (the program, in
fact, moved to Houston). We are the best
case scenario: we are alive, we have
insurance and savings, and we had our cat
with us when Katrina bore down. But that
doesn’t help our friends, who are damaged,
or the city we’re leaving behind, which
needs us.
You see old people, as old as my grand
parents, at The Home Depot buying new
�{Alumni Voices}
toilets and carrying
two-by-fours. You
talk to a co-worker
who didn’t have
insurance, and you
know that no one
will ever buy her
another house. You
read obituaries-too
many of them-for
people who died of
heart attacks and
strokes during their
evacuations, deaths
that don’t factor
into the official
hurricane death
toll. You see homes
that used to contain
lives gone silent,
smudged from the
black waters, and
spray-painted by
inspectors warning
“NO ENTRY.” The
owners of one of
them wrote back:
“Mom Is Okay.
We’ll Miss
Everyone. God
Bless.”
Four other
Johnnies took a
bigger hit than we
did and are staying. Sarah Todd and David
Olivier (both A94), and their two girls,
Louise, 4, and June, a, are renting a
friend’s guest house while their own home
is gutted and rebuilt. Billy Sothern and
Nikki Page (both A98) are soggy but
surviving. Billy’s father, a specialist in
mold remediation, has become a local
celebrity.
Fortunately there are light moments,
every day. When I finally got in touch with
our exterminator, we had a love-in over the
49
Sara Roahen and
Mathieu de
SCHUTTER, IN FRONT
OF THE HOME THEY
BOUGHT LAST APRIL.
Even though the
HOME WEATHERED THE
storm, the couple
HAD TO MOVE TO
Philadelphia.
phone, exchanging evacuation stories and
well-wishes. Natural disasters remind you
that people matter more than anything,
and that’s entirely good. We have room
mates now, friends whose apartment is too
moldy to inhabit, and another friend stops
by to take warm showers because his
neighborhood doesn’t have natural gas yet.
Our busy little household embraces us
with the sweet illusion that the city is
bustling again rather than barren. On top
of that, they say the oysters are safe to eat.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
our water is potable
even if it smells like
a Jacuzzi, and
restaurants in our
neighborhood are
busier than ever
with people who
would have killed
for a proper bowl of
gumbo during their
evacuations. The
other day, my friend
Cynthia and I took
the walk we used to
take once a week
before the storms:
through Uptown,
across the levee,
down the streetcar
line, past Audubon
Park, and back
home. Neither of us
mentioned the
bundles of branches
we had to hurdle, the smelly refrigerators
we passed, how empty the park seemed, or
how quiet it was on the streetcar tracks.
Like in our past lives in New Orleans, we
just felt lucky to be there.
�50
{Alumni Association News}
From the Alumni
Association
President
Dear Alumni,
I’ve been thinking
about Montaigne
lately.
He seemed
mundane and irrele
vant to me in sopho
more year, but he
has informed my life
in ways that other teachers have not. I’m
not sure why, but I think it has something
to do with practicality.
Every day I bump into challenges-some
more mundane than others. Each one asks
me to think carefully about myself and
others, about thought and action, about
perception and possibility. These situations
also demand that I act, hopefully in accord
with my insights and commitments. In the
Essays, Montaigne does the same thing,
but he does it better. He thinks about the
dilemmas of a normal life, makes sense of
them in ways that are moving and
profound, and takes courageous action.
A practical integration of the true and
the useful did not come easily to me. Even
with a pragmatic bent and the push of
economic necessity, it took me several
years to begin to braid thought and action
CHAPTER CONTACTS
Call the alumni listed belowfor information
about chapter, reading group, or other alumni
activities in each area.
into a graceful whole. In midlife, the task is
still far from complete.
I think of this as my personal version of a
community-wide challenge. How do we
commit ourselves to the highest values
while living in a demanding and mundane
world? Montaigne can be a guide, but we
must work to live up to the challenge as
individuals and as the college.
These days, St. John’s is doing much
more to help alumni bridge this gap
between real and ideal than the college did
in earlier decades. For example:
Both campuses offer internships (the
Hodson Internship in Annapolis and the
Ariel Internship in Santa Fe) to help
students and recent alumni experience
professional lives that may interest them.
The Career Services offices on both
campuses are well stocked with informa
tion, and the directors and staff are quite
knowledgeable about options for work or
further education.
The Virgil Initiative matches alumni
with current students to help them under
stand the issues of transition and find
resources to help them thrive.
Association chapters welcome current
students and alumni into their seminars
and social events to help smooth the way.
As an institution, the college is also
making strides to integrate practicalities,
performance, and accountability into the
life of the mind. For example;
Our new president in Santa Fe, Michael
Peters, is attending to the practical issues
of the aging physical plant and other
matters that shape the health of the
DALLAS/FORT
WORTH
Paula Fulks
817-654-2986
ALBUQUERQUE
Bob & Vicki Morgan
505-375-901!^
BALTIMORE
Deborah Cohen
410-472-9158
DENVER/BOULDER
Lee Katherine
Goldstein
720^46-1496
ANNAPOLIS
Beth Martin Gammon
410-280-0958
BOSTON
Diane Cowan
617-666-4381
dianecowan@rcn.com
MINNEAPOLIS/
ST. PAUL
Carol Freeman
612-822-3216
CHICAGO
Rick Lightburn
rlightburn@gmaiLnet
NEWYORK
Daniel Van Doren
914-949-6811
AUSTIN
Charles Claunch
512-446-0222
college.
A new college-wide chief information
officer, Cathy Smith, has joined the
community to build and implement infor
mation management solutions.
Christopher Nelson (SF70) continues to
shape a productive community in
Annapolis.
Under the leadership of Jeff
BishopfHAqb), the college-wide advance
ment effort continues to thrive, and alumni
support those efforts in a variety of ways.
Friends and foundations recognize the
quality of management and administration
for the college as well as the excellence of
the Program.
Both campuses reach out to prospective
students who represent the diversity of the
larger community.
The growing strength of the college
paves the way for new and ambitious goals
for tutor salaries, new facilities, and excel
lent services to support students and
alumni.
The college is healthy, and alumni are
thriving because we all recognize that the
practical and the theoretical are mutually
dependent, not mutually exclusive. Even if
I didn’t understand that as a sophomore, I
certainly understand it now. And
Montaigne showed me the way.
For the past, present, and the future,
Glenda H. Eoyang (SF76)
President
St. John’s College Alumni Association
NORTHERN CALIF.
Deborah Farrell
415-731-8804
SALT LAKE CITY
Erin Hanlon
801-364-1097
PHILADELPHIA
Helen Zartarian
215-482-5697
SANTA FE
Richard Cowles
505-986-1814
PITTSBURGH
Joanne Murray
724-325-415Z
SEATTLE
Jon Bever
425-778-6372
PORTLAND
Lake Perriguey
lake ©law-works .com
SOUTH FLORIDA
Jonathan Sackson
305-682-4634
SAN DIEGO
Stephanie Rico
805-684-6793
SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA
Elizabeth Eastman
562-426-1934
{The College- St. John’s College - Winter 2006 }
TRIANGLE CIRCLE
(NC)
Susan Eversole
919-968-4856
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Deborah Papier
202-387-4520
drpapier@verizon.net
WESTERN NEW
ENGLAND
Peter Weiss
413-367-3174
�{Alumni Association News}
Barrand
Buchanan
IN Bronze
BY Patricia Dempsey
When Tylden Streett, class of 1950,
unveiled the busts he created of
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan at
Homecoming in Annapolis, there was a
sigh of delight from alumni gathered in the
Conversation Room for the All-Alumni
meeting. Though works-in-progress in
plaster, the life-size busts capture the spirit
of the two visionaries.
Streett created the busts as a personal
tribute to the two men, but also as a way to
keep Barr and Buchanan’s legacy at the
forefront. “At St. John’s, we are indebted to
Barr and Buchanan,” says Streett. “I think
some of the young students today are not as
aware of the fact that the college’s program
exists today because of them. They were,
to me, the most important thing about
St. John’s. I was very fond of them and the
memory of them, because St. John’s
changed my way of thinking and the
direction of my life.”
A few years ago during a slow period
with commissioned works, Streett began to
work on the busts. “My years at St. John’s
had an enormous influence on me-so these
portraits were appropriate,” says Streett,
who attended St. John’s after a military
career as a fighter pilot in World War II.
“I looked into a lot of colleges, but at
St. John’s I was impressed with how Barr
and Buchanan were educating students by
having them read the original works of
great thinkers.”
Streett worked from memory and photos
to sculpt the busts. Ideally when he sculpts
a subject, Streett poses the person once
and takes photos from many angles. “For
these portraits I didn’t have this luxury,”
says Streett, “but I knew them both.
Buchanan interviewed me before I
attended St. John’s, but I didn’t remember
his appearance; I knew Barr when I was a
student. Also Barr has a memorable kind of
face, an actor’s face-the features are put
together in such a way that one easily
remembers it.”
Streett, who graduated from the
Maryland Institute College of Art in 1955
after attending St. John’s for two years,
was invited to pursue graduate studies at
mica’s Rinehart School of Sculpture,
where he earned his master’s degree in
1957. A former director of the Rinehart
School who still teaches at MICA, Streett
has received numerous awards and grants.
In addition to his privately commissioned
work, he has created public works such as a
limestone gargoyle for the National
Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Streett starts with a life-size head shaped
in clay, “an ordinary head with no distin
guishing features,” then sculpts it to look
like the subject.”
When it came to Barr and Buchanan,
Streett sent those who were familiar with
Barr and Buchanan photos of the clay
sculptures and asked for suggestions.
“Many, such as John Van Doren (class of
r947), were very helpful. I’m still getting
comments. Some felt that Buchanan is
younger-looking in relation to Barr.”
Once Streett feels the clay stage is
complete, he moves on to the molds and
castings. “The mold is chipped off and I
end up with a plaster replica of the clay
bust.” Then comes a mold over the plaster
replica and a wax cast of the sculpture is
ready. Streett shapes and shades the wax
cast, and when he’s satisfied with it, a
ceramic mold goes over the wax cast.
At the foundry, the wax is melted out and
molten bronze is poured in.
When this mold is broken off it reveals
the bronze bust, but there is more work to
be done. “There are certain imperfections
created by the process and the hightemperature furnace which can cause the
mold to crack, and wax may flood out. So I
do what’s called a ‘chaste’ and go over the
whole surface with a hammer and a chisel
tool. I might polish the nose, a cheek
bone-surfaces where I want to bring up
51
ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
All alumni have automatic membership in
the St. John’s College Alumni Association.
The Alumni Association is an independent
organization, with a Board of Directors
elected by and from the alumni body. The
board meets four times a year, twice on each
campus, to plan programs and coordinate the
affairs of the association. This newsletter
within The College magazine is sponsored by
the Alumni Association and communicates
association news and events of interest.
Glenda Eoyang, SF76
A85
Secretary - Barbara Lauer, SF76
Treasurer - Bill Fant, A79
President -
Vice President - Jason Walsh,
Getting-the-Word-Out Action Team Chair-
Linda Stabler-Talty, SFGI76
Mailing address - Alumni Association,
St. John’s College, P.O Box 3800, Annapolis,
MD 31404, or 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
Santa Fe, NM 87505-4599.
light.” In the final stage, Streett creates a
patina using chemicals to change the
coloration.
Once the busts are completed-currently
they are at a Baltimore foundry being cast
in bronze thanks to the generous donations
of several alumni-they will be displayed on
campus, perhaps in the Barr Buchanan
Center. If their presence inspires future
and current Johnnies to learn more about
the two men who brought a “radical” new
concept of education to a small and
struggling college, that would be a good
thing, says Streett. In any case, he feels
that he has done
something to honor
two men who changed
his life.
“I did it for me,” he
adds. “They seemed
awfully important
to me.”
Tylden Streett
UNVEILED HIS TRIBUTE
IN PROGRESS—TO THE
New Program
FOUNDERS DURING THE
All-Alumni
{The College- St. John’s College • Winter 2006 }
meeting.
�5a
{St. John’s Forever}
A Changing
Campus
A comparison of these two aerial shots (top,
1939; bottom, 2004) shows the changes
that have come to the Annapolis campus
and its environs over the past sts decades.
Still to be built, as the historic photo shows,
were Campbell Hall, a dormitory, and
Mellon Hall, also home to the Francis Scott
Key Auditorium. The Carroll Barrister
House had not yet been moved from down
town to the campus. The turrets still graced
Pinkney Hall. The ungraceful stack
looming high above the trees was part
of the college’s heating plant, torn down
in 1950Shortly after the older photograph was
taken, major changes were made along
College Creek; trees were cut down and the
shoreline was filled in. The college’s
neighbors have also changed. State office
buildings and housing now flank the
campus on the west, and the rail lines are
long gone, replaced by Rowe Boulevard.
And of course, the Liberty Tree-aligned
with the south face of Pinkney in the older
photo-is missing from the contemporary
shot.
Yet even this more contemporary aerial
photograph is now outdated: Spector Hall,
nearly identical to Gilliam Hall (shown here
on back campus) and just south of the
building, is now complete and occupied.
{The College- St. John’s College ■ Winter 2006 }
�T
Priscilla Husted Griscom , class of 1955,
^955by Priscilla Hustei
DELIVERS HER TOAST DURING THE
rnscom.
Homecoming banquet; Alumni Association
President Glenda Eoyang looks on.
Class of 1955
Fifty years later
the names have all fled
Aristophanes, Euclid
old white men are dead
what did we study?
why did we so?
to all be forgotten
from a half century ago
we studied for pleasure
we studied for fun
we studied to talk
our ideas to let run
we studied to hear
what others did say
of nature, of gods,
of death, in their way
we studied to show
those unwelcoming men
how women could do it
better than them
we studied for power
we studied for pride
no study for grades
were then ever made
we studied for Wi n free
and Curtis and Bart
we studied our life
to live fuller and smart
we studied to argue
and studied to laugh
and studied to see
what women we’d be
we studied for love
for St. Johnnies we were
true to ourselves
we studied for HER
—Ki
Alumni Calendar
Opening Celebration, “With a Clear
and Single Purpose,” 7 p.m. Friday,
April 21,2006
;
Croquet
Sunday, April 23,2006 - i p.m.
Summer Alumni Seminars
gathering. The evening begins with coffee 5 in Santa Fe, July 24-28, 2006
and desserts, moves into FSK auditorium
for a program which features an overview
Homecoming, Santa Fe: July 28-30
of plans for the college’s future, and end^^ ,
with a champagne reception.
Homecoming, Annapolis:
Sept. 29-Oct. I, 2006
Homecoming in Annapolis, 3005
Left: Rachel Bartgis (A09) and beau
Joseph Pereira enjoy the Waltz Party;
Annapolis Dean Michael Dink (class of
1975)
ENJOYING HIS 30TH REUNION.
Above: Admiring a future Johnnie.
PHOTOS BY ALEX LORMAN
{The College
-Sf, John’s College •
Winter 2006 }
�Periodicals
Postage Paid
STJOHN’S COLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS ■ SANTA FE
Published by the
Communications Oefice
P.O. Box 2800
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
ADDRESS service REQUESTED
*****************5-DIGIT 87529
S292 P1 15817 ANN1
MS. AMY MCCONNELL FRANKLIN
HC 74 BOX 24512
EL PRADO NM 87529-9546
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<em>The College </em>(2001-2017)
Description
An account of the resource
The St. John's College Communications Office published <em>The College </em>magazine for alumni. It began publication in 2001, continuing the <em>St. John's Reporter</em>, and ceased with the Fall 2017 issue.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The College" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=56">Items in The College (2001-2017) Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
Creator
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, Md.
Santa Fe, NM
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Language
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English
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thecollege2001
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A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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paper
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52
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The College, Winter 2006
Description
An account of the resource
Volume 32, Issue 1 of The College Magazine. Published in Winter 2006.
Creator
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St. John's College
Publisher
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St. John's College
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Annapolis, MD
Santa Fe, NM
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2006-01
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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text
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pdf
Language
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English
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The College Vol. 32, Issue 1 Winter 2006
Contributor
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Harty, Rosemary (editor)
Dempsey, Patricia (managing editor)
Hartnett, John (Santa Fe editor)
Behrens, Jennifer (art director)
Borden, Sus3an
Goyette, Barbara
Knapp, Caroline
Maguran, Andra
Mattson, Jo Ann
Naone, Erica
Utter, Chris
Johnson, David
The College
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